


blue: the biography of louis selkirk

by reddawns



Category: Louis Tomlinson - Fandom, One Direction (Band)
Genre: 1d, AU, American - Freeform, Angst, Comedy, Coming of Age, Cute, Drama, F/M, Fanfiction, Jealousy, Romance, Sad, Teenage One Direction, UK - Freeform, We made it, anemia, don't let it break your heart, kill my mind, not a larry fic, one direction - Freeform, walls
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-12
Updated: 2020-02-26
Packaged: 2021-01-26 06:43:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 31,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21369868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reddawns/pseuds/reddawns
Summary: Enter Charlie Marshall, a girl of many principles who recounts all the times she had with her best friend, Louis Selkirk.[Completed Louis Tomlinson AU. Just an experiment. I changed his last name for the sake of fiction, and I completed the sequel too!]
Relationships: Louis Tomlinson/Original Female Character(s)
Kudos: 2





	1. Prologue

A professor of mine once asked me, “If you could describe the color blue without using _ sky _ or _ ocean_, how would you do it?”

Easy.

I imagine blue as an emotion. You don’t see it, you feel it. Blue stands for sorrow and depth and serenity, but none of that is necessarily positive or negative—it all depends, of course, on the context of when you feel it. While I feel blue, I can also see it everywhere I go: overhead, underfoot, on my being as well as on my peers’. It’s a characteristic all humans share with one another. My dear Louis Selkirk is the epitome of blue to me, not only because of his fondness for navy or his cerulean irises, but also because of what we experienced together, which was so moving, so heavy, yet so calm.

Louis and I are no longer living in the same world. He’s flown between Los Angeles and London more times than I can count, and even though I am in exactly the same place as when we met, I feel that he is still beside me. His life touched mine in such a way that I can’t remove his living spirit from my ghost; we are connected forevermore. Every day is a reminder of what we used to have, and whatever that was might linger on at least a little bit in our minds, but we’ve gone our separate ways.

Now, I grew up in Pennsylvania, but I traveled overseas during summer sessions and met my Louis in Yorkshire, England. We were barely fourteen—he and I share a birthday, down to the hour—and were at a Doncaster Rovers game with my British grandparents. Since our seats were directly next to one another, I explained to him that I couldn’t follow sports and I was completely unaware of what was happening. (I only bothered to talk to him about it because he was dressed in red and white from head to toe and bled Doncaster spirit, whereas my grandparents were seated the entire time, sipping on overexpensive beer, complaining about some business associates named Addison and Imogen.)

“What’s that?” he hollered over the noise of the fans cheering all around us. I didn’t know his name at this point, but it was then that he looked at me for the first time, and despite his red and white face paint being gaudy, the first thing that caught my attention was the color of his eyes. If you’re thinking blue, you guessed it. Those narrow drops of azuline created a striking contrast between his athletic spirit and his candid self which I came to appreciate in a matter of seconds.

“What’s going on?” I shouted back, cocking my head toward the field to indicate that I was lost. He made a sympathetic face and stood me up onto my feet, for I had been sitting, and pointed to the players.

“Well, Doncaster’s got eleven players—all teams should—and we’ve got the crazy fans, if you can’t see for yourself—” he uttered, obviously being brief so as to get back to his cheering. His jumps from topic to topic were overwhelming but I didn’t know of any better way to learn the game. “They’re trying to get the ball into that there goal, and that’s Swindon over there, keeping us from getting the ball into that there goal. Aww, _ bugger_, Sullivan!” He made frustrated gestures at the goalkeeper.

I noticed automatically that he understood how little I knew about the sport. Repetition was key.

“How long have you been a fan?” I asked him, suddenly more intrigued by his demeanor than by the game.

“Me whole life, you ninny! Pay attention!” he exclaimed loudly, a smile cracking across his angular face. I felt a lurch in my chest due to his word choice but his body language showed that he was playing with me. We didn’t speak for the rest of the game, only swapped glances and jumped up and down together whenever a Rover scored. We won that game, which I was fortunately able to deduce myself (but not because I knew the rules of soccer).

After the events were over, my grandparents and I made our way out of the stadium, sharing a high from the generally exciting atmosphere. Pappy went to the restroom while Gram and I stood against a wall, waiting for his return. I almost didn’t want to leave the game after having had such a grand time, but it was terribly humid outside and the cloak of night was nearly upon us. We hesitated at the exit of our section before actually heading for the parking lot, and I had to ask why.

“We want to catch up with the Selkirks before we go too far off,” my grandmother told me. I made a face. “The lovely young boy you were sitting next to is their son. His parents are pesky business partners of your grandfather’s.”

“What?” I said, furrowing my brows.

“Your pappy doesn’t much fancy the Selkirks,” she whispered playfully through a wide smile. I couldn’t help but chuckle because my grandfather was endearingly opinionated. “It’s only polite to say goodbye to them before we’re off. Don’t you agree?”

“Oh, sure. I did like their son.”

Pappy returned from the restroom at the same time the Selkirks came into my field of vision. He didn’t appear much older than me, but the boy was taller than his mother and nearly the height of his father. I met eyes with him again and offered him a smile, to which he lifted two fingers and saluted me. Then he said, “You’re Mr. Dion’s granddaughter, are ya?” His Doncaster paint stripes were still bold, almost like he hadn’t sweated a single drop for the whole game.

I just nodded my head at first until my grandmother told me with her eyes to introduce myself. “Charlie,” I told the boy.

“Louis.” He stuck his paint-stained hand out and I shook it lightly, hoping not to transfer any residue. His parents caught up with my grandparents while we spoke. “Are you from here by any chance?”

“I’m actually American,” I shook my head. “My family is obviously British, but I only spend summers here, and that’s not even every year.”

“Bummer,” Louis replied, sticking his hands in his pants pockets. His brown bangs, smooth and shiny enough to reflect a television show, stuck out from a Doncaster Rovers beanie whose pompom was losing strands, and the tips of his hair touched his jacket collar. I couldn’t imagine how hot he must have felt under all those layers.

“Thanks for teaching me about soccer,” I added, trying at all costs to avoid making the interaction even more awkward. He bit his lip when I said “soccer.”

“No worries,” he shrugged. “Have you ever played or watched it before?”

“I’m more into hockey,” I admitted.

He made a hissing noise with his mouth and shook his head in disapproval. “You lost me there.” I laughed and looked at his eyes again; they were still beautiful. I couldn’t get enough of them. You just didn’t see those kinds of eyes in Pennsylvania.

“Ready, Charlie?” my grandmother interrupted, placing her palm on my upper back to guide me into the parking lot. I just nodded and directed my attention to my feet. The car was not far from the venue.

“Pappy, do you see the Selkirks very often?” I asked once I was situated in the backseat. It still felt weird seeing him on the passenger side.

“Sadly, I do.” He started the car but didn’t move it until the air conditioner was on.

“What’s wrong with them?”

“Love, you know I’m a salesman. And they are too, but they haven’t mastered the art of it—they think _ I’m _ their target audience, and it’s got me cheesed off, is all.”

“And how do you feel about Louis?”

“Who?”

My grandmother slapped him on the arm for that remark, but I proceeded to tell Pappy that Louis Selkirk was their son whom I’d apparently befriended. He was absurdly pleasing to look at, but I didn’t mention that part out loud. I just wanted to know if I’d ever see him again.

Given that this all occurred in 2005, you’ll be shocked to know I was too anxious to ask Gram for some means to contact Louis or his parents. We did not have their home phone number, nor did I have a phone yet period, and e-mail was the easiest way to get in touch. Louis was cute, but I was shy, and I needed time to recharge my charm and confidence before I could talk to him again anyways. It was the end of the summer and I would be going home in a couple of weeks. Why hadn’t I met him in May when I first arrived in England?

Then one day—more specifically, my last day before flying back to Pennsylvania—Pappy slipped a handwritten letter under my bedroom door and left me to read it without a word. That might have been the happiest moment of my fourteen-year-old life had I read the letter, but I waited until _ long _ after I was home to even open it.


	2. Dawn

By Christmas, I’d almost completely forgotten about Louis. I was so engulfed in school as a freshman that I couldn’t think about anything except for my work. But I was thrilled, to say the least, when my parents flew me out to Yorkshire again, and I reached for that suitcase in which I accidentally kept the envelope my English friend had given me.

After I unpacked all my belongings, I sat on the floor by my bed and ripped open the letter, afraid to even peek at it but feeling that it was necessary after all this time. It was dated four months prior, which made my heart sink. I hoped Louis hadn’t expected a response.

_ Charlie: _

_ Hey there. I’m writing this in a hurrey, but my mum agreed to give it to you ASAP. If you want to keep in touch with me, my address is on the envelope. Hope your doing well. _

_ By the time your reading this, I’ll have written it yesterday, but tomorrow (today?) I’ve got a doctor’s apointmant. After, I am going to be at Sandall Park and I would love it if you asked youre gran to take you. You certinly caught my eye at the Rovers game. _

_ Would be great to hear back, but I understand if you can’t. _

_ Youres, _

_ Louis Selkirk _

I stared down at the wrinkled page. It looked as though he had spilled something on it—tea, perhaps—and his harmless little spelling errors made a smile form on my face despite my sudden heaviness for having left him alone at Sandall Park without any heads up. I shut my eyes, folded the paper back into its torn envelope, and weighed my options.

I could sneak out and visit this Sandall Park on my own. I’d gone there once before. But then I realized the odds of finding Louis there were practically none, so I ruled that out. I could write Louis a letter and beg his forgiveness, but I couldn’t bear the thought of waiting for a matter of days before I got closure. My last option: I could talk to Pappy and ask him to update me on those nagging Selkirks and their son as well. I was only going to be in Doncaster until New Year’s and I had just a couple of weeks before I might never hear from this Louis boy again.

“Care for any tea?” Gram asked me, materializing in my bedroom doorway. I was so swallowed by my thoughts that I hadn’t even heard her footsteps approaching, but I stood up off my feet and nodded at her, clutching the letter in my hand. “Whatcha got there?”

“Just a letter,” I uttered, leaving her curious for only a second. “From Louis.”

“Aww, is he your boyfriend back home?”

“No, Louis _ Selkirk_.” Her mouth formed an O-shape and she wriggled her drawn-on eyebrows at me suggestively, but I blushed and pushed past her to beat her to the kitchen. “Do you have cinnamon tea?”

“Sure do,” she hummed.

“Listen, when’s Pappy coming home?” I asked her, taking a seat at the table while she tended to the kettle.

“He should be here shortly.” Shortly wasn’t soon enough.

“How shortly?” I furthered, causing her to look at me over her shoulder with a curious expression. “Sorry. I just need to ask him something.”

“Anything I can help with?” She poured two cups of tea, placing one on a little saucer for me. It smelled delightful and the steam opened my pores.

“Maybe,” I shrugged. “I wanna get in contact with Louis, but in person.”

“If you want, I’ll go and ring his mum.” I nodded eagerly and sipped on my tea while she went into the other room. When Gram came back, my cup was halfway empty, but she had a confused look in her eye.

“What?”

“Louis’ in the hospital,” she told me, taking a deep breath afterwards. She didn’t exactly have tears in her eyes but it looked more like she was scared to see _ my _reaction. “Mrs. Selkirk is willing to let you visit him for a couple of hours if you’d like. I know that hospital inside and out.”

I frowned at the news and set my cup down, taking in some air. I said, “Shall we, then?”

I had actually been to Louis’ hospital when I was ten because I sprained my ankle trying to chase down a stray cat in the street. It had leaped over a storm drain and my feet were small enough to get caught in the grill, so I had to go to the hospital and get a splint. I knew my way around the building solely for that reason.

Supposedly, Louis was bedridden in a room on the second floor. I had yet to learn what he was ill of or how he injured himself or whatever it was, but soon I’d find out anyway. Gram let me go by myself because she had to make dinner for Pappy; she promised to come and pick me up very soon, and that I could “ring” her if I needed anything.

“Hi miss, are you a relative?” a nurse asked me in a very perky voice before I could enter the room I thought Louis to be in. I just smiled affirmatively and pushed past her, stopping dead in my tracks as soon as I entered his room.

There he was, as shockingly pale as his bed sheets, with a book he appeared to find boring resting in his lap. From my small distance I found solace in those shimmering blue eyes; the fire in them was still there despite his lack of life everywhere else. There were dark tubes hooked into either of his arms and I didn’t dare look at them in case it made me queasy—just the thought of being in a hospital made my stomach knot, so this was an uncomfortable experience to say the least.

“Uh, hi.” I didn’t know what else to say.

Louis tilted his chin up ever so slightly and blinked at me in slow motion. His hair was longer, less shiny, more textured. I thought maybe since he was so pale he was on sedatives or other drugs; the act of looking at me might have given him such motion sickness that he _ had _ to be sluggish.

He blinked again and gazed at me for several seconds before moving so much as an optic nerve. At long last, his mouth fell open, revealing that his cracked lips were colored a sickly shade of pink. “Carrie.”

“Charlie,” I corrected him, feeling flames burn up my cheeks. I never liked correcting people. His fracture of a mouth expanded into a smile, and he beckoned me over before the joy fell out of his face. “What?”

“Now’s just the worst time of all to be talking to you,” he shook his head, shutting his book regardless. I almost apologized for being there but he continued speaking: “I’m so embarrassed by our last encounter.”

“Why? That game was really fun.”

“I meant me letter,” he chuckled, closing his eyes and leaning his head against his pillows. “I’m so humiliated.”

“Don’t be!” I frowned. “I read it today. That’s why I’m here.”

“You couldn’t even _ open _ the damn thing until four months passed?” he asked, making a face. I knew he wasn’t angry with me, just amazed. I shrugged apologetically and walked forward a little more so I could sit on the chair beside his bed. “Well?”

“Well?” I repeated.

“Aren’t you gonna ask why I’m a total mess right now?”

“I didn’t wanna be rude,” I admitted, “but I do hope you’re okay. It…it’s been a while, hasn’t it?”

“Ages,” he agreed. “Truth is, I’ve anemia.”

“Oh,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”

“I’ll be fine,” he said. “I’ve only just been diagnosed. I’m having a blood transfusion. You ever fink about why I was wearing a hat and coat in August?”

“You remember your exact outfit?” I asked him, and he rolled his eyes, still smiling. “It was a little concerning, but I get it now. You must be freezing.” I made a gesture at his get-up; I didn’t notice it earlier but he was buried under four hospital-grade blankets of different colors and probably had some thick socks on underneath of them.

“Certainly am,” he confirmed, showing a little teeth. A machine in the room beeped and startled me, but he brushed it off. “That’s normal. Look, can we get back to that letter?”

“Ah, yeah. I’m so sorry for reading it this late. I totally would have gone to Sandall Park with you if I opened it in time.”

“Hey, hey, let me talk.” His accent made him sound so much older than he was. “I only wanted to get to know you. I didn’t know you’d gone back to America that day, but me dad told me.”

“Horrible timing, huh?”

“Right. But I’ve thought about you over the months,” he confessed. “Only sometimes, though. Not in a weird way. You know.”

“I know,” I laughed. He turned his face away from mine and yawned for a rather long time; when he looked back, the lines in his face were emphasized and my brief time away from his stunning blue eyes reminded me how pale he looked. “I’ll be in Doncaster until the New Year.”

“I hope you’ll come and visit on me birthday then,” he smiled softly, appearing almost high. “Won’t you?”

“Well it depends,” I told him, “because I’m here on my birthday, too. When’s yours?”

“The twenty-fourth of December.”

My mouth dropped open by habit. “That’s mine!”

Louis’s face brightened up. “Be a dear and visit me,” he pouted, lifting his fists to his eyes to charade his whining. With his fists came the blood-red intravenous tubes, and I gasped a little before moving my eyes down to my lap. “Wot?”

“I-I don’t like the sight of blood,” I warned him, looking everywhere except at the tubes.

“Nobody does. You can leave if you’d like to,” he said in a gentle tone. I just shook my head, looking directly into his eyes now. Their color outdid that of the blood anyway.

“You have to deal with it, so I should too,” I told him sternly.

“Nonsense. You’re not the lad with anemia.” Which was true, but I stayed anyway.

We talked about simple things like how long his stay would be, what part of Pennsylvania I lived in, the Doncaster Rovers, and everything in between. And in those moments I felt as close to him as I was with my friends back home. In a way, it was unsettling because I _knew_ Louis was slowly replacing them, and the fact that he was sick made the thought even worse.

I stayed in the room with Louis until visiting hours were long over. He didn’t want me to go, which he didn’t say but I discerned anyway through his body language, drowsy as he was. Gram and Pappy picked me up and I told them I wanted to celebrate my birthday with Louis, acting as though he were my childhood best friend. Both of them overlooked this notion of mine, or so I thought in the moment—but looking back, I seem to remember them exchanging glances in the front seat. Obviously they saw something of our incipient friendship that I would have never in a million years foreseen. Hell, my parents didn’t even know Louis existed.

—

We were turning fifteen that year. Louis had been discharged from the hospital the day after his blood transfusion and was still adjusting to a new diet and prescription, but he was as happy as ever to visit me at my grandparents’ house and have cake with me.

“Happy birthday!” Louis exclaimed as soon as I opened the front door for him. He donned a maroon beanie, a grey crew neck sweater, and jeans. He also had on a quilted overcoat and a scarf which probably blocked out the frosty air. The outfit was simple but it made him seem all the more humble to me. I noticed he was carrying a little Adidas shoebox with a card taped to it, too.

“Happy birthday to you too!” I grinned, opening the door wider so he would come inside. I hugged him briefly and he became flush for a moment, which my naive self imagined was due to the temperature difference, but Pappy entered the room before either of us could say anything else.

“Hello,” Louis waved. “It’s a pleasure to see you again, Mr. Dion. Fanks for welcoming me into your home.”

“Not at all. Happy birthday, chip,” Pappy smiled back, giving me a little nod before carrying on elsewhere.

“Well, my room is upstairs if you wanna hang out,” I shrugged. I cupped my mouth with one hand and whispered, “I have a present for you up there.”

“You better,” Louis teased. “Spent me own money on one for you.”

“Well luckily for me, my Gram paid for yours,” I rebutted, and he scoffed at me. We went up the stairs and into my room.

Truthfully, it was a guest room, and nowhere did it have my name on it, but since I visited so often and for such long periods of time, I reclaimed it. The decor was entirely Gram’s, though, from her interior designing days: three walls were white with an accent one of red brick, on which hung wiry shelves for picture frames, candles, books, and the like. There was a full-length mirror, a large mahogany wardrobe where I stored all of my belongings, and a queen-sized bed whose duvet was off-white. Generally I would have appreciated some color, but Louis seemed infatuated in the simplicity of it.

“Nice room you’ve got ‘ere,” he commented, immediately drawn to the shelves on the brick wall. He ran his fingers down the spines of some of my novels—those were perhaps the only items I had contributed to the room myself—and smiled ever so slightly at my selection. “_Memoirs of a Geisha_. Never heard o’ that one.”

“Really? It’s a great book,” I assured him. “I read it for an assignment this year though.”

“_To Kill A Mockingbird_…_The Outsiders_.” Louis hummed various titles to himself, walking the length of the wall from shelf to shelf to see what else I had read. “Lookee here, this one’s got a bookmark in it.” He proceeded to pluck _ Stranger with My Face _by Lois Duncan off the furthest shelf.

“I never would have pegged you as a bookworm,” I noted, completely disregarding his innocent remarks about my collection. At this point, I had several differing impressions of Louis: fanatic “football” lover, sickly anemic boy, and now total nerd. “What do you think of my taste?”

“Rubbish,” he said with a tiny smirk on his face while he read the back cover of _ Stranger with My Face_. “Could I borrow this sometime? How fast do you read?”

“I’m pretty speedy,” I told him lightheartedly. “This is my second run-through of it though. Take it with you today if you want.”

“Certainly,” he smiled, setting it down on my bed and taking a seat beside the book. “Right then, I’d like me present now.” I laughed at his bluntness.

“All right, let me grab it.” I opened the wardrobe and pulled out a gift bag containing a nice fleecy denim jacket that looked a little larger than his size. I included a box of Mike and Ikes from the US, hoping I’d get to see him try them—plus a cheap Hallmark-type card.

“Shall we open them together?” he asked, arching his eyebrows at me. I shrugged in agreement, reaching for the shoebox. “Free…two…one.”

At the same time, we ripped open our respective packages. Louis immediately lifted the jacket out of the bag and his jaw had trouble staying shut as he felt the fleece along the collar and admired the color of the jacket. He replaced his current coat with it and a little laugh slipped out of his mouth.

“This must’ve been a million pounds. God, is it designer?”

“Don’t worry, Gram spends reasonably,” I winked.

“Hey, ya cheater. Didn’t even look at your gift.”

I pouted. “I wanted to see your reaction—by the way, there’s more in the bag—but I’m satisfied now.” I first reached for the card that was taped to the lid and tore it open, finding not a store-bought foldable like the one I’d selected for Louis but a piece of notebook paper with blue pen ink covering every single space on the page. I glanced up at him and he gave me a nudge with his eyes, encouraging me to read it.

He mumbled, “Letters are kinda me thing.”

_ Carrie: _

_ Hahaha! Happy birthday AND Merry Christmas Eve, Charlie! I hope youre day is fabulous. _

_ I have been looking forward to today because its my birthday and I get to spend it with a brand new friend. I’m just going to begin with a warning: the following is very cheesey. _

_ After you visited me in the hospital, I felt like I was superbly close to you and that doesnt happen very often for a lad like me (Ive found that being anemic makes every thing bloody hard. I’ve not been speaking to my other friends as much, but thats fine so dont lose to much sleep over it =) .) So I thought for your present Id do something un-tradisional. _

_ To be honest, my family havent got a lot of money on us right now, what with my medical expences and all, so I hope you like my cheap ass effort. Crossing my fingers that you didn’t declare ‘no presents’ while I was on drugs in the hospital, but I thought it was nessessary to give this one to ya’. Also, so sorry about the cheap parcel. _

After nearly tearing up at the first quarter of the letter, I peered down into the shoebox on my lap and smiled softly at a red and white Doncaster beanie resting like a snow angel on top of the cardboard folds. There was a pompom of black and white threads at the top that looked somewhat like it was dieting, which was insanely familiar to me. I took it out of the box and fitted it to my head, peering in the mirror on my wall and grinning at the reflection.

“Louis, I love it,” I told him wholeheartedly, smiling widely at him. He had opened the Mike and Ikes while I was reading and popped one into his mouth as he watched me react. “Where have I seen this beanie before?”

“I wore it to the game where we met,” he sighed, enjoying the taste of a strawberry-flavored candy.

“I can tell this means a lot to you,” I said, losing my smile. He stared me down with those electric blue eyes and tilted his head to side.

“Problem?”

“Your present makes me look like all I care about is material possessions,” I frowned, looking at the floor in disappointment. I pointed at the beanie. “This—this is so sentimental. I don’t know what to say.”

“Hey, I don’t want to hear that kind of talk,” he scolded. “I love this jacket, no matter the price. I’m just glad our presents are even: mine for the sob stuff and yours for the quality. I mean _ really_, is it Gucci?”

“Of course it’s not,” I chuckled, twiddling my thumbs. “I’m glad you like it, but I still feel bad. This hat is the best gift I’ve gotten all year.”

“The letter is, more like,” Louis snorted, snatching it back to look over it. “Hey, you didn’t even finish reading it. I forgot how long it was.”

“I was going to later,” I defended myself. He rolled his eyes playfully, moving closer to me on the bed and putting his arm around me.

“Happy birthday,” he repeated, pressing his lips together in a smile and rubbing my shoulder. By some instinct, I leaned my head on his shoulder for a moment and didn’t speak. I could see the two of us in the mirror from this new angle, but I wasn’t sure if Louis could too.

“We look pretty good,” I joked, pointing at the glass fixture to determine if he could see it.

“I don’t need a mirror to know I look peng.”


	3. Confesión

I couldn’t make the flight to England the following year for summer or Christmas because the price was accumulating on my poor parents, which bummed me out to say the least. Even though I’d become a waitress in the years since my last visit, I didn’t have enough money for four plane tickets. In fact, I didn’t go anywhere at all until I was nearly seventeen years old.

I’d gotten a boyfriend named Michael just before my sixteenth birthday and he was terribly upset to see me move to England for the summer, but personally I wanted more than anything to escape my town. I’d been deprived of my grandparents and of Louis for nearly three years, and while we started to communicate via Skype, it was never the same as being in their physical presence. It wasn’t fun seeing Louis the color of a ghost while laying limp on a hospital bed in person, but Skype made it oh so much worse. And Frankly, I was afraid of what he might look like when I finally returned to Yorkshire.

But when I did make it back, I was more thrilled than scared. I had asked Louis to come and pick me up at the airport with Gram and Pappy, but he never got back to me on whether he could; however, I was pleased to see him standing between my grandparents with a bouquet of flowers in his thin arms. It reminded me of the first time we met because he was taller than Gram but shorter than Pappy, and the same height pattern pertained to his parents when I saw them at the Rovers game.

It was hot enough where even Louis could go out in short sleeves. He’d grown some patchy facial hair and had some tattoos done since I was gone, but seeing them for the first time did not come as a huge shock for some reason. (In our Skype calls, he was usually wearing long sleeves.) Since we were only kids during this time, I can’t say I didn’t double-take when I laid eyes on his moustache and inked arms that day, but the new look suited him extremely well so I didn’t feel like offering criticism.

I hugged my grandparents first and allowed Pappy to drag my suitcase behind him while Louis and I caught up. We stood in silence for only a second before swamping each other in a much needed embrace. He had apparently started wearing little dabs of cologne as well. Knowing him, it was probably one of those “black sand and sea salt musk” types of fragrances where the components themselves aren’t scented but the cologne is bold enough to choke someone—I giggled imagining Louis in a store, selecting a perfume only because it contradicted itself. It’s a bookworm’s nature to defy society in that sense.

“Hey, love,” he said, kissing me on the cheek. He towered over me by at least three inches now, so his chin fit nicely above my shoulder when we hugged. I liked that about him; he didn’t seem so frail anymore.

“How’ve you been?” I asked. “I’m sorry I haven’t been able to get here.”

“Don’t sweat it,” he shook his head. “We’ve got a whole summer together. And to answer your question, I broke up wif me girlfriend last week but I’m swell.”

I didn’t even know he had a girlfriend to break up with.

“Aww,” I cooed, frowning even though he couldn’t see it because my face was smushed against his shoulder. We pulled apart and followed after my grandparents, who were far ahead of us in pursuit of their vehicle. I accepted the bouquet of flowers out of his sinewy hands. “Michael’s upset with me for leaving PA.”

“Have you two sealed the deal?” he teased, smirking immediately after. I reached up and ruffled his long hair.

“‘Fraid that’s none of your business,” I scoffed. “At least not until you admit  _ you’ve _ made your way around the town, Mr. Knife Tattoo.” I touched his forearm for effect.

“What makes you think that?” he asked. I didn’t respond but instead made a knowing face at him, and he deflated. “All right, all right. Call me a whore.”

“I never said such a thing!”

“But you thought it, and that hurts, love!”

“I have a question,” I popped up suddenly, raising my finger for theatrics. “Does your doctor have to give you the okay?”

“What, to fuck a girl? Yes, yes she does. Next question, please.”

I whacked him in the arm with my flowers and took closer notice of his tattoos while we neared the parking lot. Gram and Pappy were out of sight by now, but Louis appeared confident in where we were going. “How about to get tattoos?”

“ _ Oh _ yeah,” he laughs. “Specifically told me not to get any ink when I’m older, but I did it anyway ‘cause I’m bad now. I’ve got a mate whose uncle is in the business—did ‘em for a pack of cigarettes.”

“What happened to nerd-Louis?” I complained, knowing he was still very much a lover of the library.

“Like you haven’t changed,” he rolled his eyes, “Miss I-can-legally-drive-now-and-me-boyfriend-is-a-prick.”

“Hey, take that back,” I scolded, hitting him again, but harder and with my hand. “That was uncalled for.”

“I know it was, but I only speak the truth,” he sighed, stuffing his hands in his pants pockets. “I’ve picked up a pattern wif all your Michael-related complaints over Skype.”

“Oh yeah? And what is it?”

He imitated an American woman’s voice and made obnoxious hand gestures as he spoke: “Michael’s not spending any time with me! Michael’s got too many girl friends besides me! Michael won’t let me pick the restaurant!”

I stopped him from walking any further by holding my arm out in front of him. He looked like he was going to release a half-assed apology and explain that he was still in the right because he’s a stubborn person, but I didn’t let him talk. “You make him sound so evil. It’s not like that at all, Louis.”

“Whatever, love.” He rolled his eyes, but this time without that signature snicker. The sparkle in his eyes was suddenly dampened into grey. “Let’s catch up. It’s a long drive.”

Needless to say, Louis was different on the inside too. Maybe I had been too distracted by my home life, but I didn’t catch onto any signs of contempt from Louis over Skype, especially about Michael. Sure, my phone was blowing up with angry text messages from Michael  _ while  _ Louis summed up my grievances, but my poor idiot self thought nothing of it. The men in my life were all corroding into jagged little stones—all except Pappy, of course.

“Way to hustle, you two,” Gram said when Louis and I reached the car. I smiled apologetically and climbed into the backseat, preparing for a very awkward, silent car ride.

“How’s that Michael doing?” Pappy asked me while we left the facility. “Have you got yourself a fine lad, Charlie?”

“Sure do,” I sighed, staring out the window in agitation. I couldn’t help but let Louis’ opinion get into my head. Pappy said something about Michael being a lovely person and I just nodded; Louis tapped me on the thigh and gave me a narrow look.

“What?” I mouthed.

“What’s the matter?” he mouthed back, glancing to the front seats before unbuckling himself and moving to the middle seat so he was closer to me. I shook my head. He raised his voice to just under a whisper: “Forgive me if I’ve been rude.”

“I just…” I started, propping my elbow on the ledge on the door. “I hate it when you throw your opinion out there like it won’t affect anyone.”

“Look, Charlie. You can tell me that I’m wrong, but I do what I please,” he said, tossing his right arm behind my headrest. I rolled my eyes.

“You are so full of yourself,” I commented. “I want you to go straight home when we’re back.”

“What, can’t handle the truth?” he said. I never knew him to be so pompous.  _ He thinks he’s hot shit _ .

I didn’t answer him until we were back at Gram and Pappy’s house. Before Pappy took my luggage up to my bedroom, Louis told him he and I were going for a walk; I had neither the time nor the nerve to object.

“Wanna tell me what you stuck up your ass while I was gone?” I yelled at him after we got to the sidewalk. “I don’t have the energy to do this, Louis. I just got off a plane. So just name your issue and let’s be done with this.”

“Oh, bugger!” he groaned. “I’ve been dropping you hints all damn spring but you ‘aven’t a clue.”

“What?”

“All sorts of hints! That Michael’s not right for you!” he elaborated, digging into his pockets and pulling out a cigarette. I glared at him as he lit it right in front of my face—I’d never seen him do that. “I think Pennsylvania’s making you thick, Charlie. Only plausible explanation for this fuckery.”

His vocabulary was certainly different now, too.

“I can’t believe you right now,” I spat out, choking on what could have turned into tears, had I cared enough to cry for him. “If you hate him this much, why didn’t you tell me when we started going out? Maybe I could’ve seen your side of the story, but it’s much too late now.”

“You’re breakin’ me heart,” Louis rolled his eyes, exhaling a smoke ring. So he’d had practice.

“And look at you smoking now,” I said bitterly. “You think you’re everything to me, don’t you?”

“If you’d been here more, all  _ this _ wouldn’t have been such a steep change,” Louis retorted, using his hands to scan over himself for emphasis. “You’re different too, you know.”

“Oh yeah? How?”

He took the cigarette out from between his lips and pretended to use it as lipstick. He fluttered his eyelashes and flipped his stiff, dirty hair. “Shall I go on?”

“You think I’m different because I’m a junior in high school who likes to wear makeup?” I clarified incredulously, stifling a genuine laugh. “You think that means I’ve changed? You’re delusional. You, Louis, I don’t give a  _ shit  _ what you look like nowadays. It’s your old self that’s gone all of a sudden, and I hate this new get-up.”

“This ‘new get-up’ is me now,” he shrugged. “Look, I’m only trying to explain that you need to open your eyes.”

We walked in silence from then on until I thought we had gotten back to Gram and Pappy’s, but when I took my eyes off the sidewalk, we were at a different house altogether. Louis went up the path and pushed the door open, stepping on his cigarette to put it out, and stood there in the doorway, expecting me to follow him. I couldn’t find the word “no” for whatever reason, so I wound up in his bedroom with him in a very uncomfortable silence.

“I smoke because it warms me up,” he said in a much less hostile tone than I was used to that day. “Calms me down when I’m sat thinking too much about me bullshit. I don’t care if it looks cool like people write it out to be—not now, at least—but me mum doesn’t know, so don’t fill her in. Please.”

“I won’t,” I murmured. I glanced at Louis’ arm, which was covered in goosebumps. He must have only recently felt a draft because he stood up and dug out a denim jacket from his closet. It was the one I gave him for his fifteenth birthday, and it fit him more snugly than when he first received it. Despite our argument, it comforted me to know he still wore it.

“Can you at least see where I’m coming from?” he asked, folding his arms across his chest to trap heat. I just stared, contemplating. Did he really make a compelling argument, or was he just trying to fool me so he won the fight?

“No,” I decided. “Maybe I should start talking to you about the good details of my relationship so you finally understand that I’m not some object of abuse.”

“All right,” Louis shook his head, shifting his weight onto one leg. He eyed me expectantly, but I didn’t know what he was waiting for. He pushed me by saying, “Your loss.”

“Listen to me—”

“It’s not me problem if you can’t read signs when they’re right in front of ya,” Louis interposed, holding his arms out palm-up to show me that I was being irrational. Then he started counting on his fingers: “Can’t tell the difference between separation anxiety and emotional torment, can’t tell what I’ve been shooting for since we met. It’s just as fuckin’ well.” He headed for the door of his room but stopped himself.

“Emotional torment? Who the hell are you to criticize my relationship when you don’t even know the guy?”

“I don’t have to know the guy to know he’s mad—! And I  _ don’t _ mean mad in love!” Louis argued, his breaths coming out curt and disgruntled.

“Are you saying I’m not lovable?” I accused him. His eyes widened momentarily and he cackled like a witch, at which I could only stare and blush.

“Charlie, you don’t get it!” he seethed, turning back around and clenching his fists for emphasis. “You know why I’ve been saying all those things about Michael? I didn’t have a girlfriend, I had a friend wif benefits just so I could get you off me mind! And I just can’t stand it when you’re too stupid to see all me goddamn effort!”

“Don’t call me stupid! And you could have told me that sooner!” I screamed back, standing up off the bed. His brows shot up toward his hairline and he shook his head, turning back around. I was about to open my mouth to talk but he interrupted me with a sharp look in his eye, which I could only see in the reflection of one of his picture frames. This, to date, is as frustrated as I would ever see him in the years to come.

I lowered my voice a couple of notches and whispered, “Louis?” but he launched forward and threw a fist at his wall next to his door, just barely missing that picture frame. It fell to the floor with a loud clatter and I couldn’t see anything else that was going on because his body was in the way.

“I…”

“Louis?” I called again, starting toward him cautiously. He turned to the side and revealed that there was a huge hole in the wall, and his hand was the color red. “What did you do?!”

“Mum,” he called out in a tremble of a voice. He stumbled backwards and my heart pounded in panic. He looked me in the eye before falling onto the floor, blinking away his consciousness. I rushed out of the room and retrieved Mrs. Selkirk; the rest was a blur in my eyes, maybe because of the tears or maybe because I was so afraid that my brain tried shutting the memory out.

At the hospital, the three of us—Louis, Mrs. Selkirk, and I—were rushed into a room with high priority due to his case of anemia. He had passed out and woken up two or three times between his house and the emergency room, but once his knuckles were wrapped up and he took some medicine, he was stable. His cheeks became a lighter shade of tan and his eyelids were hooded.

“Hey, love,” he said when he first took notice of me in his room. He must have been very out of it to not even see me there until then.

“Hey,” I sniffled, wiping the tears from my eyes. I wasn’t crying because of our clash but because I was scared for him. His entire hand would be plum-colored for a couple weeks, the doctor said, because of his anemia, and he should get some rest so as to avoid reopening the wound or getting lightheaded. I was worried he would be moody all week and not enjoy his summer because he was so fragile, but the smile that took onto his face just then told me he would be okay.

“Aww, you cried for me,” Louis hummed, reaching his good hand out to find mine. I grabbed onto it and looked down at the floor. “I was startin’ to think you didn’t care anymore.”

“Of course I care,” I mumbled.

He angled his face a certain way that made him look stern, parental. “It wouldn’t kill ya to show it, love.” I just nodded my head and let go of his hand, standing up off my chair. “Where you going?”

“I need some air,” I said, heading out and not turning back.

I felt his eyes on me while I left the room, but for the love of God, I couldn’t convince myself it would be smart to go back in there and talk things out in case he (or I) acted out again. Now that I knew he was okay, I had no reason to be there. Just being in his presence felt like a crime now.

I told Mrs. Selkirk I would get a ride home from Gram, who arrived promptly. She asked why I was at the hospital, so I told her Louis had an “episode,” which caused Gram to stop prying. I even bothered to read all of Michael’s text messages finally, and I wasn’t pleased by their passive aggressive tone. Gram noticed I was moping the entire way home even though I was turned away from her, so she offered me a cup of tea and a chat. I declined both and sat on the front porch, soaking in the heat to thaw my emotional frost.

I got a phone call later that evening, when I was wide awake due to jet lag, from Louis. He used Gram’s number and I was almost unaware of how to respond because I’d never heard his voice on the phone before, just Skype. He sounded much more lively and was definitely past our dispute.

“Charlie,” he said in lieu of a hello or his signature “Hey, love.”

“Louis,” I said. “Why’d you call me?”

“Sheesh, just wanted to check in.”

“Sorry. How are you feeling?”

“Peachy,” he said. I could hear a smile in his voice. “Me mum said I’ve got anger issues, but I think you just tick me off on purpose sometimes.”

“Ha ha, hilarious,” I rolled my eyes.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you,” he said in a more serious tone of voice, “why exactly you had to go so early today. And I want the truth, so don’t bother telling me porkies.”

“Porkies?”

“Lies. Tell me I’m a screwed-up mess if that’s how you really feel, I won’t take it like a pussy.”

“Oh,” I murmured, scanning my surroundings. The house across the street from Gram and Pappy’s was vacant now. “I just had enough today, that’s all.”

“Mmm. That why you sound so sad?”

“I do  _ not _ .”

“Then how could I tell there was somefing wrong?” Louis and I each took a pause and I swallowed hard, not wanting to spill anything else about my mood. “You there?”

“Yeah.”

“All right, well you’re buggin’ me out so I’m coming over to chat in person.”

“What? Louis, I’m falling asleep—” This was a lie, of course.

“Stay awake for me. I live real close.”

“Hey.”

“You sound like you need a hug, so therefore, I’m moved to give you one.” He hung up immediately and in a matter of two minutes, I saw him waltzing down the sidewalk, hair covered up by a beanie. He was still wearing the jacket, and from quite a distance I could see the bandages around his right fist. They made him look like a boxer.

“You waited for me?” Louis asked me when he got to my doorstep. He sat down next to me, bearing an elvish smirk. I just shook my head at him and looked down at my lap, intertwining my fingers together. “What’s wrong?”

“This whole day has been a major disappointment.” My voice broke at the end of my statement, giving Louis the urge to comfort me.

“Come here,” he beckoned, moving closer to me and wrapping his arms around me. I hugged him back despite my negative situation and found solace in the folds of his fleece-collared jacket. “Been a minute since I’ve seen you totally happy.”

“I’m sorry,” I sighed, sniffling again. “I’m having an off day, like I said.”

Louis pressed his cheek against mine. I could feel his stubble; it was weird, but I enjoyed the skinship. “What I should’ve said was, ‘been  _ free years _ since I’ve seen you totally happy.’”

“You bring it out in me,” I chuckled out of embarrassment. He didn’t say anything else, so I let go of him and changed the subject: “I hate to say this, but I think you were right about Michael. Only a little.”

“Course I was,” he teased, eyes skimming over my face like it was a page full of prose. (Note his love of books.) “What brings us into agreement, my dear?”

“He sent me thirteen texts while I was on the plane,” I confessed, hoping the sunset would hide my rouged features. “Let’s just say none of them said ‘Have a safe landing!’”

“First of all, have you got the iPhone 3G now? I want your number so I don’t have to say hello to your nan every time I want some Charlie,” he pointed out, to which I giggled. “Second of all, I hate that lad. I’m not ashamed to say it.”

“I know you’re not,” I sulked. “I don’t know what to do, Louis. Tell me what to do.  _ Please _ .”

“Well if it’s up to me,” he considered, stroking his chin for comic effect. “Dump his arse right on the street. Make him fly out here just so you can tell him off, or I can if you’d like, and act like you and I are together to make him jealous. You know, the cherry on top.”

“You monster,” I gasped, and he replied with a cheeky grin.

“Can’t help it. You deserve better.”

“Stop it, you flirt,” I insisted, and he lowered his eyes. I had triggered something. “What?”

“Took you long enough to notice,” he whispered.


	4. Undula

New Year’s Eve 2008 was the first memorable one I ever celebrated.

Louis had some friends from soccer who invited him and a plus-one to a party, and of course I was the plus-one. A couple of them, he said, were from teams in entirely different cities, but they made sure to be there for old times’ sake. One was from Holmes Chapel, and another from Wolverhampton, both of which were much out of Doncaster’s way. The host was from Bradford, an hour away; we’d be riding a train to get there.

“Have you ever been outside of Yorkshire?” Louis asked me as we boarded. We’d be staying the night at the host’s “flat.”

“I’ve been to London once,” I recalled, squeezing onto what looked like the only empty bench in our car. “Never anywhere like Bradford, though.”

“You’ll like it,” Louis promised me, sitting down beside me. “It’s a wee little city.”

“And you packed all your medicine, didn’t you?” I double-checked. Louis rolled his eyes, a grin spreading across his face like icing on a cake. He threw his head back in faux annoyance.

“Yes, Mum,” he groaned. “Stop caring so much. It hurts me.”

Over the summer, Louis and I had had somewhat of a fling, but when I went home to begin school again, I remembered Michael and I hadn’t ever officially broken up. After the fight he and I had back in Pennsylvania, I was a bit turned off to the idea of relationships and it slowed things down with whatever I had with Louis. And despite him being my best friend, I couldn’t exactly trust Louis’ temper either. So we had an iffy dynamic in 2008—that should explain the bickering.

The train ride went by fairly quickly, or so it felt. Louis told me funny stories about his school experiences. He told me about the Rovers game he had gone to and his school’s new “football” players who “sucked arse.” At my school, the soccer team was undefeated; I told Louis this and he, being a jealous baby, could only think to tell me I pronounced “football” incorrectly.

Louis cheered as the train came to a sluggish stop. It was dark out by that point, for it was ten o’clock, but I could still tell we were in unfamiliar territory. As we got off the platform, he put an arm around me and asked, “Are you excited?”

“Hell yeah!”

We caught a cab to his friend’s place and arrived in less than fifteen minutes. The boy’s front door was wide open and there was a small band of people visible inside. This came to me as a relief because I had never gone to a party before, so starting out small would satisfy me. That’s what I thought, anyway.

Louis whipped out a cigarette, this time claiming the smoke would make our entrance all the more grand, and lit it just a few seconds before we entered the home. Everyone in the room turned their heads to look at us, and their faces lit up.

“‘Ey, Louis!” cried a boy wearing a flannel shirt and black jeans. He had dark, sparkling details that I was drawn to, but he was focusing on Louis in the moment, hardly acknowledging my presence. His accent was much more viscous and warm than Louis’, as were the rest of his features. “Been donkey’s years, mate. I missed you. How’s the mum?”

“Fine, fine,” Louis answered, opening his arms up to hug the boy. He passed his cigarette along to the boy standing behind the one he was hugging. Another guy rose up from the floor and waved at us, speaking to Louis before taking notice of me. “Lads, meet Charlie. She’s visiting from the States.”

“Hey,” a handsome boy with arrows tattooed on his forearm smiled, sticking his hand out for me. I shook it graciously. “My name’s Liam. Pleasure.”

“You too,” I smiled. The boy with a curly mane and a Manchester United jersey approached me next, offering me a hug instead of a handshake. He even went as far as kissing me on the cheek, mumbling in a deep voice that his name was Harry.

“Oh, and I’m Zain,” said the first boy who Louis hugged, taking a drag from his cigarette that was making its way through the group. “Great to finally meet you. Louis talks loads about you.”

“Is that so?” I asked, smiling at Louis. He shoved Zain in the chest as an answer.

“Where’s Nialler?” Louis pouted, scanning the rest of the room.

“Couldn’t get over here,” Liam said. “Bummer, but he’ll be all right without us.”

“Charlie, Louis, get in here!” Zain exclaimed. The guys had formed an arc around us that limited us to standing in the threshold, so Louis shut the door behind us on account of his temperature sensitivity and placed his hand on the small of my back to guide me farther into the room. “Join the festivities.”

The rest of the people in the house were in separate rooms, I later learned, for it wasn’t as small of a party as I thought. The kitchen was filled to the brim and the main room was alive with Wii games and intoxicated Bradford teenagers. I don’t know how I didn’t hear a thing, but I didn’t.

“What would you like?” Louis asked me, licking his lips in anticipation. I didn’t say anything because I didn’t know what he was referring to. “Vodka? Rum and coke?”

“Oh,” I said, jumping as a girl bumped into me from behind. To hide the fact that I didn’t know anything about alcohol, I told him, “Surprise me.” He winked at me and disappeared into the whirlpool in the kitchen.

Someone grabbed onto my hand as soon as he was out of sight, and when I spun around, I was standing face-to-chest with Harry again.

“Hey,” he laughed. “Pardon me if I’m wrong, but you look kind of lost.” I laughed too, agreeing.

“Your eyes are on point,” I said. “I haven’t been to a party like this in…ever.”

“It’ll be fun,” Harry said. “Come and dance with me!”

“Louis should be back soon—”

“Don’t worry about him,” Harry shrugged. “He can’t expect you to stand here and wait for him, can he? Come and have a dance.” He made so much sense I couldn’t resist it anymore.

He led me to the room with the video game console set up, where people were playing Dance Dance Revolution and not conventional games. I desperately hoped Harry didn’t want me to compete against him, and fortunately he didn’t, but the people who _were_ competing made for a very rowdy room that I couldn’t help but sway in.

Harry stood in front of me and began jumping in time to P!nk, a red cup sloshing in his hand. I followed his moves and those of the people around me; my heartbeat matched the throb of the bass. The floor became a trampoline for me—I couldn’t feel anything, just a rush. I’d never gone dancing to music this loud with this many people, much less in a foreign city where I didn’t have to worry about being judged the next morning. To experience it without Louis wasn’t as empty as I’d imagined it would be; instead, I had the time of my life there, making eye contact with Harry and only Harry, feeling his hands on me from time to time, shouting lyrics that stood out to me. In fact, what felt like an hour passed before I ever heard another word of Louis.

By now, Liam and Zain had joined Harry and me so that was when I realized they were a close friend group. Louis remained out of sight until suddenly the song ended and I heard a familiar high-pitched voice shouting incoherently.

“Looks like Louis needs an opponent for ‘I Kissed a Girl,’” Zain told me suggestively, nudging me towards the center. I whirled my head around and saw him wobbling on top of a piece of furniture, looking through the crowd for a particular someone. We locked eyes and then he leapt off when he was satisfied with his finding.

“_OI, CHARLIE!_” he hollered over the buzz of conversation. The song was a couple of seconds in by now so Louis seized my arm, dragging me to the center of the dim room. I could distinguish Harry’s laugh as he saw me following timidly after my drunk friend. I looked back at him and reached out a hand as if he would grab it and save me from the humiliation, but he did not.

Louis and I thus competed in a very heated dance challenge. I found that he was loose in the hips and that I had somehow mastered hand-eye coordination, so together we didn’t look too shabby. (That’s what Liam told me, anyway—I obviously couldn’t see myself.) I laughed the entire time, mostly at myself, but I had fun nonetheless. Louis was very into it, which contributed to the merriment.

“Way to go, Charlie!” Louis cheered when the song was over. “Anover go?”

“I think we should sit this one out,” I chortled, hooking our arms and dragging him out of the center. Louis laughed at me for whatever reason and tapped me on the nose, slinging his arm over my shoulder. I can only imagine how much of a douche he looked like; the alcohol probably wasn’t good for his condition, but it was too late to do anything now except force some water into his system.

“I’ve got to take a piss,” Louis told me once we were out of the hectic main room. “Where’s the loo? I need to use the loo. I’ve got to take a piss, Charlie.”

“I know, hun,” I assured him, dodging as he tried to kiss me on the temple for the third time. I pointed him straight ahead: “That looks like the bathroom.”

“You’re coming wif me, ya ninny,” he said, suddenly taking charge. His grip on my arm was hardly a grip but I thought I’d humor him for now, at least until the time came when he would actually be urinating. When we were just outside the bathroom, he asked me what we were doing there. His accent was a million times thicker with alcohol on his breath and quite honestly, it was charming.

“You need to pee,” I summed up.

His face contorted as though he had taken full offense to my statement. He ripped his hand away from me and shifted his weight. “_You _need ta pee, you sack of shet.” I’ll admit I had trouble keeping a straight face. He stood there expectantly until he asked, “Well?” and cocked his head towards the bathroom. I followed him in, desperately hoping he didn’t actually have to use it. In all honesty, I wasn’t sure he knew in the moment what the bathroom was even for.

“Louis, you’re so drunk,” I commented.

“You’re not me mum, are ya, Carrie?” he snapped, but his face turned happy in a split second. “Just pullin’ ya leg! I love you, Carrie. No, fuck. _ Charlie_. I’m so sorry.”

“I love you too, Louis,” I sighed, taking a seat on the countertop while Louis made eyes at himself in the mirror. I pushed the door shut with my foot, beginning to enjoy our privacy no matter how wasted Louis was.

Louis stepped away from the mirror and mumbled something that sounded remarkably like “Get out, I ‘ave to wee” before he yanked his pants the whole way down and peed in the shower, not even giving me a chance to leave the room. Thankfully he had aim—he was just aiming at the wrong thing. I looked away as soon as I could.

“Can’t forget ta flush,” he slurred, proceeding to flush the toilet and signal at me to move off the counter so he could wash his hands. “Why are you here? You saw me willy.”

“I did not,” I promised him, turning bright red in the cheeks—this time I could see it in the mirror. His blue eyes met mine, and he began to smirk as he cleansed his hands.

“Your loss.”

“Okay, Lou-_wee_.” He burst into a fit of laughter and slapped his knee, pointing to himself in the mirror as if his reflection had told the joke to begin with.

“You’re too good, gimme a break.” He spun around and took my seat on the counter, eyeing me with an adorable closed-mouth smile.

“Can I help you?” I asked him.

“I don’t suppose so, fanks,” he said. “God, I’m firsty.” He cupped his hand and let the faucet run over it, and then, spilling water over the both of us, slurped on the contents. I rolled my eyes and opened the door to leave. He followed me out and grabbed my hand again with his wet one, this time just to hold it.

“What’s the matter, you puppy?” I asked him, nodding down at our hands. He tried to grab my other hand, but I bested him.

“Come on, give Louis your hand,” he said rather sternly. I placed it behind my back to mess with him, and his expression went blank, almost like my hand was gone altogether. “Wot the—”

“Object permanence, bitch,” I teased, grabbing onto his other hand with my disappearing one. He smiled a big, goofy smile and giggled down at our four hands for reasons I couldn’t discern. He looked like an infant who was crying out of overwhelming joy. Or maybe he really was one.

I entertained him for exactly fifteen more minutes—I knew because he kept asking me what time it was—before I heard the announcement that the New Year would be upon us very shortly. I started to walk Louis back to the main room, but Harry, Zain, and Liam emerged from it with a pair of girls who I’d seen periodically throughout the night, so I figured we should stay and accompany them instead.

“Everybody got someone to snog?” Zain teased, eyeing me and Louis up and down. I shook my head to deny any suspicions; meanwhile, Louis cried out “You, baby!” and pointed at Liam.

Harry peeled Louis off me by offering him a hug, for which I was very thankful; my hands had become clammy due to Louis’ grasp on them. The swarms in the kitchen and main room started to count down extraordinarily loud, so we all jumped in before it would be too late.

“Five…four…three…two…one!”

Suddenly everyone in the room had formed a pair except for Louis, Harry, and me. It all happened in a couple of seconds: Harry approached me before Louis could even come close in his drunken state, and then the taller boy bent down and pecked me on the lips. He wished me a happy New Year before walking back to Zain and Liam.

Loud hurrahs drowned out any conversation going on across the room, but I didn’t need to hear Louis’ words to know how he felt when Harry kissed me. Although he was still _ very _ drunk, I knew it was genuine; his face was full of despair and hurt. He was the color blue.

—

I had no choice but to sleep with Louis that night. I was afraid to let him go to bed because of all of the alcohol he consumed, but he hadn’t thrown up yet and that was what kept me on edge. For the whole night, I hadn’t _ seen _ him down any drinks, and maybe that was a good thing, but it left me with a lot of unanswered questions.

While I lay on the couch recovering from a grade-A headache, Louis and Zain scrambled around, picking up trash and rearranging furniture. It was close to three o’clock and they were very noisy together, Louis because he was Louis and Zain because he was humoring the other. Their echoing voices both entertained me _and_ worsened my pain.

Every time Zain passed me by, I stopped him and apologized for being of no help. “This headache is too much. I’m sorry.”

“No worries, love,” Zain brushed me off, tossing me an unopened water bottle from his collection of trash. “You should get some sleep. I’ll take Louis in ma bed wit’ me.”

“Okay,” I said indebtedly. “Just make sure he sees me before then. I wanna clear the air.” He nodded with understanding and carried on, flashing me an “okay” symbol on his way into another room. Back when that was socially acceptable.

At about three thirty, Louis came to the couch with a steaming mug of coffee and a water bottle identical to mine, visibly trying not to spill the coffee as he approached; I could tell by the way his tongue stuck out of his mouth. I had been awake playing a new mind-reading app on my iPhone, so it felt like no time at all had passed.

“Hey, love,” he mumbled as if talking could disturb his balance.

“Hey,” I said, sitting up and patting the cushion on my right side. I put my phone facedown on the coffee table so as to avoid being distracted.

“Wot’ve you been up to, owt or nowt?” he asked, swaggering his way to the sofa once his coffee was on the table. I rolled my eyes.

“Are you still hammered?” I asked cautiously.

“Not so much,” he said. “I’m fully there.” He winked and tapped on his head.

“So you remember what happened during the countdown, or am I reaching too far back?” I asked, unclear about whether he was still upset.

“Oh, certainly,” he shrugged. “Not too stoked about it, if I must be honest.”

I sighed down at my lap. “I just wanted to say I’m sorry Harry kissed me,” I mumbled, feeling embarrassed by the matter. “I know you would have done it.”

“Wot, you can’t even admit you kissed him back?” Louis scoffed, a dubious smile staining his face. My whole body froze. _ He’s really starting something this late? _

“What? I _just_ _said_ sorry,” I cried, playing victim. Hell, I _was_ the victim.

“No, you apologized on ‘Arry’s behalf,” Louis corrected me, tapping my knee factually. “Now, that don’t exactly sound like it came f’om the bottom of your heart, love.”

“I met Harry two hours before he kissed me. I can’t even express how _ unlike _ me it is to kiss someone that soon after meeting them! And you, of all people, should know that!” I shook my head. “Besides, I have a boyfriend. I was just being friendly with Harry. I’ve been friendly with you too, haven’t I?”

“So let me get vis straight,” he said, cutting me off before I could continue. The leftover vodka in his system still shone through. “You’re not only lying to _ yourself_, but you’re lying ta me—_and _ Michael—all because you fink you’re livin’ the dream life, eh? Two lads at a time? I don’t fink you know what ‘friendly’ really means. Fact, you’re not friendly at all.”

“Excuse me, it’s not like that.”

“Nay, nay, of course it’s not like that,” he bargained sarcastically. “Ya know, not every girl gets ta have two blokes fall head over heels for her. Plus ‘Arry, too—so that’s free. And speakin’ as a lad meself, I don’t suppose you’re doing _ me _this dirty, are ya? Tell me it’s Michael who’s gettin’ the boot.” I took a second to think through his slurred language.

“Louis, you and I were _ never _ together,” I clarified for him, my hands shaking with passion. “Yes, we got _ closer_. Yes, I may not know where I stand with Michael right now. But you have no right—”

“Spoiled brat! Takin’ take me rights away from me right after you’ve took me heart and stomped on it too?”

“Slow down,” I warned. “And don’t you call me that. I’m trying to tell you all the reasons I’m _ not _the person you take me for.”

“Who do I take you for, Charlie? Who do I focking take you for?”

Louis sipped on his coffee slowly—probably because he preferred tea by a long shot—and bounced his thigh up and down as a sort of energy outlet, though clearly it didn’t work because he set his mug down rather loudly on the table and spoke again in a different tone, jabbing his finger in my direction: “Every time I talk to you we get in a jam and I’m _ fockin’ _sick of it.”

“I know,” I said simply, purposely avoiding showing my emotions. He had trodden on thin ice.

“Don’t you ‘ave anyfing to say to me?” he pleaded, his thigh growing still.

“I can’t think of anything that would help,” I shook my head. “I mean, I don’t know how to make you forgive me, but you’re not even trying to make me forgive you, so.”

“Right,” he said indistinctly, his eyes shifting down to the couch cushions. He brought one foot up onto the couch and sighed, rubbing his face with his hand. That was the hand with the scar from when he punched the wall after our first altercation—and despite our current status, I couldn’t help but think how tough Louis could be. “We just don’t know wot we want f’om each over and we ‘ave ta figure it out before long, or else…”

“Slow down a second,” I stopped him, putting my hand on his knee. All of his words were beginning to sound the same, so it was best to be silent for now. He and I both glanced down at my hand for an oddly finite amount of time and then returned each other’s gazes; once again, I found myself swimming in his hyacinth eyes. Lately they’d been the color of mountain slate, but now more than ever, they emanated an ultramarine brilliance. They were like some glimmering beacon. A green light.

“Your eyes are very beau-iful,” he commented, mimicking my thoughts exactly. I didn’t react verbally but scrutinized his thin lips instead. I was about to look back at those eyes of his but then he leaned closer me. He gravitated towards me until there was an inch of space left between our faces, so I came forward just enough to touch his lips. I had never felt so in sync with anyone before that very moment.

I barely brushed my mouth against his when he withdrew sharply. When I opened my eyes, his face looked strained and he seemed to be almost in pain. It was like he regretted this but wanted it even more. Like he wanted me but my lips were lava. He rested his forehead on mine, keeping his hands to himself.

“What?” I whispered. He took a staggered breath, turning his face away ever so slightly while maintaining physical contact.

“Break up wif Michael,” he choked out. I had no idea he would be so sensitive.

I smiled, knowing that if he was going to have me, it had to be the whole me, not the taken me. He had no interest in risking what I had with Michael; he simply wanted it to be over. Best of all, he was serious despite all the immature flirting he did in past years. So I promised him, “Done.”

“Don’t ever let Harry touch you again,” he added, his hands beginning to slide up from my legs to my waist. His voice was hoarse and needy, eyes squeezed shut. I could feel his beard scratching my jaw as he whispered these demands to me.

“Done,” I repeated. I started breathing heavily as soon as he put his lips on the skin right beneath my earlobe.

“And always,” he said finally in a more tender yet desperate tone, “_always _ stay with me.”

“Done,” I panted, pulling his body closer to me. He guided me swiftly onto my back and brought his lips back to mine. We lay together for an eternity, making up for all of our lost time—lost to distance, technology, and resentment. And in being so close, his hands explored my body in places I had never let anyone touch or see before, but it was an enlightening experience. It was the right time, and the _ only _person I wanted to spend it with happened to be Louis Selkirk. I don’t regret any of it today even though we were merely seventeen-year-olds recovering from intoxication.

Over the years, he’d certainly become less awkward with girls, I noticed. He knew the curves of my form better than I did and was gentle in proving that to me. We were rustling around on Zain’s couch until the coffee ran cold, until the first spoke of sunlight appeared—and even then, neither one of us was tired enough sleep. It was rejuvenating, the things we did.

When sunlight flooded the room at last, we began to hear noises from various places in Zain’s home, including an alarm clock, a running sink, and slack footsteps every here and there. We didn’t dare make a sound above a whisper knowing Zain expected us to be asleep at this hour; our train wouldn’t leave until noon anyways, so we had time. Besides, it was more than relaxing to lay on top of Louis’ barely clothed body underneath a thick throw blanket.

As we lay there looking out the window at the downhill view of foliage, Louis stroked my hair. “I was so legless last night,” he said softly. It was the first full sentence either of us had spoken in hours.

“I know.”

“Thought you should know not to worry about taking advantage of me,” he sighed, his arms snaking around my waist. I had his undershirt on and I felt bad knowing he could be freezing, so I rubbed his hands and forearms for him.

“Good,” I told him, pulling one of his hands up out from under the blanket and kissing his fingers. “Fortunately I could differentiate between drunk Louis and sober Louis.”

He laughed at my remark. “Did I wee in the shower?”

“Saw it with my own two eyes,” I told him. He groaned and threw his head back over the armrest, ashamed of himself. “Oh, but don’t worry—at least you remembered to flush.”

“My God,” Louis laughed. “I’m bloody awful when I’ve had a drink or two.”

“Just two?”

“Hey, I’m ‘ardly seventeen. I don’t hold me liquor very well.”

“And there’s nothing wrong with that,” I let him know. He exhaled, and I felt his warm breath on my scalp. “But I have to admit, I like your drunk voice.”

“Me drunk voice? Fancy it if I talk like vis f’om now on, love?” he teased. “Can’t ‘ardly help me’sen. Ah could do it whilst I’m sober too, ya know, only ah got a massive headache righ’ now.”

I laughed, glancing over my shoulder to look him in the eye, as I had been lying with my back against his chest. He started rubbing his hands together so I asked, “Are you cold?”

“Wee bit.”

“All right, I’ll grab your jacket for you,” I offered. He loosened his grip and pulled the blanket up to his chin when I stood up fully.

“Hooo, Sheila.”

“Who?” I asked, whirling around to look him in the eye.

“You, ya idiot,” he cheeked. “You should wear that more often.”

“I certainly will,” I teased, winking. He let out a dramatic moan at me as I wandered into the corner where our outermost clothes had been tossed. I scooped up the whole heap and plopped it down next to Louis on the sofa, offering him back his T-shirt, but he told me I should keep it, followed by a chef’s kiss motion. His humor was something else.

“Mornin’,” said the voice of Zain. I rotated my body to see him standing in the threshold, squinting due to the sunlight flowing into his eyes. Seeing as it was still early, his hair wasn’t styled yet and he was wearing something similar to me, but he didn’t make a single remark about my slovenly appearance. I was relieved about that.

“Hey,” Louis said. “Have you got any Advil? Me ‘ead’s killing me.”

Zain nodded his head and disappeared promptly. I sat down on the couch again while Louis sat up and reached for the lukewarm coffee.

“Would you like some of the shittiest bean juice I’ve ever tasted?” he asked me, extending the mug out to me. I laughed, pushing it back. “Swear to God, tea is holy.”

“Is it because you’re British?” I asked.

“Zain’s British,” Louis shrugged. “He seems to enjoy this rubbish.”

“Doesn’t help that it’s cold now,” I reminded him. He shrugged again, setting the cup back on the coffee table. “We have a long day, don’t we?”

“Certainly do,” he nodded, unenthused. “Listen, I’ll stay awake on the train so you can get some sleep. But if I die of exhaustion later, you’ll know why.”

I slumped at his sweet offer. “Come on. I’ll stay awake too.”

“You really don’t have to—” he started, and then he seemed to have a thought that made him smile. I knitted my brows together quizzically so he would fill me in: “Fine, as long as we can nap together at home.”

“Sure thing.”


	5. Profundity

I awoke in my bed at Gram and Pappy’s house with a pair of arms holding me. There was an intense heat surrounding me as well, but I appreciated it because the room outside of my duvet was freezing cold.

It must have been seven or eight o’clock because the sun was down and the only thing allowing me to see was a bit of lamplight seeping in from the hallway. I didn’t want to move—Louis was asleep, and I was comfortable.

He didn’t wake up for another ten minutes or so, when a couple of dishes clanged together downstairs. His eyes shot open and his entire body jolted, but otherwise he seemed entirely engrossed by sleep.

“Hey,” I said softly. One of my hands rested softly on his chest, so I felt his systematic up-and-down breaths. He stretched his arms and pressed a kiss onto my temple.

“Hey,” he replied. “How’d you sleep?”

“Just fine,” I practically yawned. I adjusted so I could properly hug him, enjoying the environment we were in. His body seemed to fuse with mine; when he shut his eyes, he seemed to take me in.

“Me too.”

He nearly fell asleep again, I assumed, before he said something that caused my entire chest to sink: “I don’t want you to leave.” Something physical stirred in my brain and made me feel ten times heavier. Something about complete and utter sadness makes gravity so much stronger.

My flight back to Pennsylvania would be early the next morning. I sighed against his neck, imagining how I would miss holding him this way, how taxing it would be to see my friends and find them dissatisfying in comparison to Louis. How no one on the entire North American continent could equate to Louis and the way he made me feel in that moment. I had yet to shed a tear going home; I sensed that this year would be vastly different.

“And I don’t want to have to,” I nearly whined, and admittedly a tear slipped. Louis squeezed me in a way that seemed subconscious, and when he rubbed my hair with his fingers I began to actually cry. I felt so at home, and the next day I would be ripped from it.

“I’ll send you loads of letters,” he promised. “Packages, too. And I’ll Skype you every night—midnight or later, I don’t care what time. Hey, don’t cry or I will too.”

“I’m gonna move here one day,” I wept. To a bystander, it might have sounded like one of us was dying. “I won’t tell you when.”

“And why not?”

“So I can see your face when I get here,” I reasoned. He chuckled, looking me in the eye and wiping the wetness from my cheeks.

“I’m gonna miss you.” I couldn’t say anything in reply so I resolved to kiss him on the lips. Let’s just say from then on, we created lots of heat.


	6. Régresser

Right after I turned eighteen, my mother was diagnosed with a mild blood-and-bone cancer. We flew to England to stay with Gram and Pappy, seeing as the hospital in Doncaster specialized in cancer treatments, and Pappy was becoming too elderly to fly. Only this time it wasn’t so nice to be back.

Being in Mom’s room with her was more painful than anything I’d ever gone through, and I wasn’t even the patient. After a couple of harrowing weeks had gone by, I’d gained a tremor in my hands and had nightmares more often than not. It didn’t help whenever I sat and watched my father cry time after time, which I’d never seen in my life until after the diagnosis. He fell into a depressed state and, I’m telling you now, it never went away.

Gram was hurt by the situation as well. She and Pappy made daily visits to Mom and, when her cancer continued to spread, we decided it would be best if we refunded our plane tickets and moved back to Yorkshire—we’d lived there up until I was six—because we knew things were serious then.

One day, I took Louis with me to visit her. He had been rather let down about the fact that I wasn’t happy to have moved to England—it obviously wasn’t that I missed Pennsylvania, because frankly I preferred the slow life I had in Doncaster. But the circumstances that caused me to fulfill my promise to Louis and actually move were too severe on my mental health. I explained this to him countless times, but it never seemed to register in his mind that I wasn’t _ only _ here for him; I still had to remind him that I was serious about our relationship, so I dragged him to the hospital and introduced him to my parents. That was something I never expected to happen, not in a million years, but it got him to shut up.

She was fast asleep when we entered the room, and my father sat by her side, praying. Every so often she’d turn her head the other way or release some sort of sigh, but her eyes never fluttered open like I so hoped they would. Louis and I made a quiet entrance and observed these things together while we stood at my mother’s bedside.

“Hey, Dad,” I said first, for he had not taken his head out of his hands since we made our appearance. “This is my boyfriend.”

He looked up when I said “boyfriend” and rubbed his runny nose as some sort of effort to clean himself up, smiling a close-mouthed smile at Louis. “Call me Dan.”

“Louis Selkirk,” Louis said in a sheltered voice. “Lovely to finally meet you.”

My dad just nodded his head and flicked his eyes down to Louis’ exposed wrist, where several of his newer tattoos were visible. He didn’t say a word about them but I wouldn’t have been surprised if he never brought it up again due to his fresh bout of sorrow.

“I assume you know about Charlie’s mum,” Dad frowned, shaking his head. “I can’t believe it’s real.”

“I’m very sorry,” Louis said, reaching over Mom to touch my father on the arm. “I know things will get better, though. I’ve got pretty bad anemia and it’s not looking good as of lately, but the best thing I can do about it is live me life, focus on what makes me happy.” He brushed me on the leg very subtly.

“Thank you for that. I’m sorry about your anemia.”

I turned and made a face at Louis. He never mentioned anything about the severity of his illness to me, so needless to say I was concerned for his health. It certainly didn’t help that my mother was practically dying right before our eyes. All Louis did was hold up a finger at me and remain silent as a mouse to be respectful, gazing down at my mother. He was a very admirable person right then.

We wandered into the hall a couple minutes later and Louis offered me his arm to loop mine through while we navigated through the building.

“So,” I said, “you mind elaborating?”

“It’s fine,” Louis reassured me. “I’ve been bruising like a peach lately is all, and it’s cold as hell all the time. Might need to up me dosage.”

“You should tell me these things,” I complained.

“I’m sorry, love.” He kissed me on the top of my head and guided me down to the waiting room. Once we were seated and a heavy silence fell over us, he told me he needed some air and stood up, and I knew exactly what “air” meant.

“I might like to try some ‘air’ too,” I told him innocently enough. He laughed a bit, perhaps at my wording or the context or both—I couldn’t tell. But I didn’t find it funny.

“I don’t want you gettin’ hooked on the stuff,” he replied, beginning to walk away. But I stood up and planted my hand hard onto his shoulder to stop him from going any farther. “Charlie, I said no.”

“I didn’t ask you. I need some relief right now.” I gestured at the ceiling since my mother’s hospital room was several stories over our heads. He bit his lip and reluctantly cocked his head, hands in the pockets of his denim jacket. Still the one I bought him when we were fifteen; he was insanely skinny, and he hadn’t gotten much taller since then.

“I’m such a bad lad for this,” Louis disclosed to himself as we got off the premises. It was chilly out. “Now, I’ve got a joint and a cigarette. You tell me what you need more.”

“I-I don’t know.”

“Right.” We wandered to some empty place near the hospital and leaned against a brick wall, where he extracted a lighter and a brown joint from a little box in the depths of his pocket. I assumed by his choice that he judged my sadness as pretty intense.

“I ‘on’t want you to inhale it straight away,” Louis warned me, “or you’ll hate it. Just get comfy for a bit, and then you try.” He held it between his lips and flamed it with his silver lighter, just holding it there and taking in the odor. I felt my heart race as he smoked—in all other settings, he was careful not to smoke too much around me, with some exceptions—but when he shut his eyes, I realized that he needed it too. He looked suave with smoke in his face. “Your turn.”

When he passed it to me, the paper was hot to the touch but nothing I couldn’t handle. I set it between my lips and held it there, unsure of what else to do. Louis nodded at me when I looked him in the eye for reassurance.

“I feel like we’ve bonded even more,” he confessed, “and I didn’t fink that was possible.”

I blinked tears out of my eyes, for the thick smoke had caused them to water. Louis marked this immediately and took back the joint, wrapping his arm around my shoulder.

“You can start to breathe it in whenever you like,” he told me, demonstrating. “‘Ere, lookee.” Then he blew a ring of white smoke out in front of us, which made me laugh. I had forgotten he could do that.

“I appreciate this,” I told him.

Over time, my tongue began to feel fuzzy and my brain too, and lots of things were no longer upsetting to me, but Louis and I kept our somber expressions for the time being. The veins in his eyes were scarily bright when I looked into his face for the first time in a while. I couldn’t stop coughing, but obviously Louis was more accustomed than I was to the sensation of dust particles sticking to my lungs, so he didn’t make a sound on our way back to the hospital except to offer me some water. We returned to my mom’s room and stood in the doorway to tell my father we’d be going.

“Listen,” Louis said to me upon getting into his car. “I feel so awful for your mum. I want to take this moment to retract every single complaint I’ve made to you this week. From now on, _ you _ relieve _ your _ stress on me.”

“There’s no need to invalidate your own problems. But thank you for being there.”

“Course, love.” He flashed his teeth at me in a sweet eye smile.

When we arrived at his house, we went inside and made tea. Louis made every effort to cheer me up further, although honestly I was too buzzed out from the marijuana; I didn’t have any idea how long it would last. Sooner than later I came down though and began to feel things at their full intensity again. I stared down at the tabletop because it was the only thing that wasn’t draining to do.

“Charlie?” he called out, looking at me over his teacup. I could only move myself to blink in response. “You all right?”

“Fine,” I assured him, gulping the rest of my tea in one go. It burned my throat on the way down but I couldn’t care less. He beckoned me over to him but I stayed seated, too emotionally exhausted to move.

“All right, lass, you’ve given me no choice,” he sighed in a parental tone, standing up off his chair and coming to my side of the table. He proceeded to sit on my lap, using my shoulders for support; he was lighter than I was. I giggled at his resolution. “I know you’re going through some dark shit, but you’ve gotta try and help yourself get better.”

“I’m trying,” I admitted, though I genuinely didn’t know how much truth was in that statement. I clung onto him just for the sake of intimacy. “If you only knew.”

“I’m just like you,” he reminded me, sighing with his mouth pressed against my forehead. He rubbed my back, and I cannot express how good it felt to have his presence there, almost in place of my mother. I felt like a baby again. I snuck my arms underneath his jacket to warm up.

I knew that it was meant as a joke, but I liked it when Louis sat on my lap. We stayed in the same position for probably an hour, and the entire time, he whispered absurd stories to me to make me laugh more. That was the first day I truly smiled all week.


	7. Ire

Come the very end of summer, I went into college undecided. I had applied for the same university as Louis despite knowing nothing about it because my mind was so clogged with thoughts of death and massacre; having nightmare after nightmare after nightmare, life wasn’t so rose-colored for me anymore, and it was the most I could do to even sign up for courses. Louis and I decided we’d commute together, which was one of the only upsides of it all.

He was an art and literature major, although he much preferred the year-round soccer program held at the university. I liked to watch him practice with the rest of his team from time to time because it was clear how much he loved the sport, how much it pumped him up. But during these practices, I only ever kept my eyes on him; one evening right before a scrimmage, I noticed someone familiar running along the field across from Louis, who just so happened to be Harry. He had come all the way from Redditch to attend the university and I only just found out, though it was no surprise that Louis kept this from me. I was sick of his Harry ordeal as soon as it sprouted.

The storm cloud over my head was whisked away when he approached me bearing a cordial smile that I had come to miss. It was good to see an old face in a setting as busy as college.

“Charlie,” he called, spreading his arms wide open before he even got to me. I stood up from my seat on the bleachers and accepted his hug without hesitation. His body radiated heat and, when our chests touched, the warmth felt alien to me. Louis was always so cold.

“How’ve you been?” I asked him. “How’s soccer?”

“We call it _ football _ over here,” he teased, pushing my left shoulder backwards after we parted. I laughed at his gesture. “I’m fine! Louis said you moved from the States, no?”

“I did!”

I was about to explain that my mother and father were born here and we moved back for a family emergency, but Louis interrupted by appearing at Harry’s left side with an unimpressed frown on his face. He was short of breath but wore a beanie regardless.

The guys’ heights were vastly different, so when he put his elbow up on Harry’s shoulder as if it made him seem happier, his forearm was at an awkward angle.

“What’s happening?” he asked, glancing from Harry to me and back. I could tell he was trying to make his decision to join us look spontaneous.

“Catching up,” Harry answered simplistically, but his eyes were on me. Louis crossed to my side of the little triangle we were standing in and put his hand low on my waist.

“Did she tell ya we’re finally dating?” he asked, smiling tightly. Harry went blank for a second, and then nodded in remembrance.

“Oh, yeah,” he recalled. “Hasn’t that been going on since…what, 2007?”

“No,” I said rather loudly, plucking Louis’ arm off of me. I could hear the passive aggressive tone in his voice loud and clear, which was not welcome here. “Louis, you look tired. Come and have a break with me for a minute.”

“Certainly,” Louis agreed, waving Harry goodbye. The Redditch boy ran off and stole a soccer ball right out of someone’s path as the other team finally arrived on the field. “Can it hurry? I’m starting today.”

“Sure, whatever,” I shook my head. “What the hell are you doing?”

“What I have to,” he shrugged, glancing behind my figure at the water bottle sitting on the bleachers. I picked it up for him and thrust it into his general area, frustrated.

“I was just trying to have a conversation with Harry,” I huffed. “No one asked you to be there.”

“Ehm, I beg to differ,” he argued, pressing a button on the water bottle to spray mist on his face. “You know me justification. ‘Ave to keep an eye on him.”

“Don’t you think I have any sense of control?” I scoffed. He only rolled his eyes, prepared to clap back at me, but I went on: “Besides, there’s nothing to even ‘watch out’ for. You were drunk off your ass on New Year’s so Harry took his opportunity and kissed me. He’s not the homewrecker you’re taking him for.”

“Yeah? And how exactly do you know that?” he challenged. My mouth fell open at the notion.

“I can’t believe you right now!” I shouted. “Look, if you’re so scared I’m cheating on you, maybe you aren’t fit for a relationship.”

“Well I’ve been gettin’ lucky till this point,” he said, and shrugged his shoulders magisterially. Despite his wicked tone, I saw amusement in his eyes based on the way they sparkled at me. “I reckon that makes _ you _ pretty easy.”

I had an urge to slap him in the face, but I knew I couldn’t do that for medical reasons, so I clenched my fists so tight my nails dug into my palms and just kept them at my sides. “You don’t talk to people that way, Louis.”

“Too fuckin’ bad,” he asserted.

I shifted my weight from one leg to the other as he looked over his shoulder at the field. “What are you trying to say here?”

“How about that I’m being a good boyfriend?” he simplified. “Overprotective, whatever. I’m not the enemy here.”

“But you _ are_,” I whined. “You’re _obsessive_. You got upset when I went to see my sick mother more than you.”

“I didn’t know anything about her condition!” Louis vindicated. “I’d never met your dad before, and it didn’t occur to me that that could’ve been me last time seein’ your mum!”

“Please don’t say that,” I begged. He nodded, took a step back, wearing a look in his eyes that said “right, my bad.” I glanced down at the asphalt beneath my sneakers and shook my head at him. “I don’t know what to say anymore, Louis. I don’t know what we’re doing or why I even said anything to begin with.”

“If you’re so unsure, why are you wif me?” he asked me rather seriously. “I read somewhere that the only point in dating is to get hitched, and you clearly see a bleak future.”

“You would never propose anyway,” I spat at him. I admit now that I was flattered, and that it distracted me to know he was reading media that had to do with marriage, but I didn’t let it change my mind. He made a face of disbelief at something that he might have registered as ignorance.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Face it, Louis, you’re a child!” I shouted. I held up my fingers and counted supportive reasons: “You’re stuck in some dimension where you and I are the entire population, you insult me like a nine-year-old little sibling, you claim you’re using me for sex just to fuel the fire, you smoke weed—and I wouldn’t be surprised if you did other drugs too—”

“I’m gonna be honest with ya,” Louis trivialized. “I do. I take plenty o’ pills, and not for me anemia. But you made me a promise, and now you’ve gone and broken it.”

“Harry doesn’t like me! Fucking ask him!” I groaned, gesturing across the field at him. “He and I have nothing in common except _you_! You made me promise not to do anything with him, but how was I supposed to know saying ‘hello’ was as bad anywhere as bad as a New Year’s kiss?! Did you even talk to him about not coming near _me_? Besides, what he did was tradition. I truly don’t see what the issue is.”

“The issue is that you betrayed me! You know Harry’s a touchy subject for me, and then I catch you hugging!” he seethed. “I’m not fit to carry on this way before a game, love, so if you only came to fuck then let’s get one in now.” He placed his hands in the pockets of his athletic hoodie and looked at me expectantly, cocking his head toward the locker room. My heart sank.

“Excuse me?”

“Come on,” he persisted. “What else could you possibly want from me right now? You don’t listen, you only talk to me when you’re sad—”

“I’m always sad,” I interrupted him. I could’ve sworn I heard some laughter from further down the front row of the bleachers, but if only they knew.

“Try being terminally ill!”

“You’re not—” I began to bite back at his statement incredulously, but then I felt a qualm. I lowered my voice for the sake of maturity: “Louis?”

His angry features softened into merely disappointed ones and he, too, spoke in a quieter tone: “Me doctor says at this point, the shit in me blood might’ve turned into somethin’. Haven’t got the test results back yet.”

At that very moment, I felt sicker than was humanly possible.

“If you had talked about anyfing but yourself for once, you would’ve known,” he accused.

I said nothing.

“Well go on then,” he finalized. “Get out of me sight. I’ll talk to you once I’ve showered.” And then he was gone.

An older man from the sidelines stared me down with the most annoyed look on his face I’d ever seen, so I headed off the field. Angry tears spilled over my cheeks as I ran out of the stadium, but I made no effort to wipe them away. I sat in Louis’ car and hunched over the steering wheel, sobbing for what felt like an eternity before finally taking myself home. He would have a ride arranged anyway. Not my problem anymore.


	8. Jocose

“So she told me there was a chance it could be leukemia. Nothing major quite yet, but me symptoms are concerning ‘cause of me demographic.”

Louis and I were sitting on his doorstep, staring down at his bright phone screen, which displayed a chain of text messages between him and his doctor. There was a list of leukemia symptoms, and those which Louis experienced were fairly alike. You could feel our collective anxiety like a gust of wind about to go head-to-head with all of the world’s most important papers.

“That’s basically me problem,” Louis concluded, raising his eyebrows optimistically as he shut his phone off. “I realize not telling you on purpose was a dick move. But I fink we have somethin’ else to talk about, love.”

I just nodded, wiping tears away from my eyes and trying to think clearer. By now, Louis’ scrimmage was long over and the sun was down, but the September air kept us warm. His locks of hair released fat water droplets every once in a while, and so his shirt was dotted with them.

“I know I go overboard when I’m angry,” he said, putting his hand on my back. “I’ve been really insensitive towards you and your emotions. After the scrimmage, I got me head on straight.

“But before I go on, I need to know your opinion on that thing I said about why people date.”

Truth be told, I hadn’t stopped thinking about it. I bit down on my tongue before gathering my thoughts and looked the opposite way. “I’m scared.”

“Of what?”

“This kind of fight has happened one too many times,” I told him, “and this time it was in public. I’m scared about how much worse it can get. And I’m gonna be honest: I _do_ see a future with you, but you test me so much. You’re really struggling with jealousy and dragging me down with you, and I have bigger issues to deal with. Frankly, we both do. So I’m terrified.”

He rubbed his eyes with one hand and moved the other up to my shoulder. “I know. I spoke with Harry and explained everything in the team room. I can’t express how sorry I am for what I said to you.”

“I was impressed that you mentioned the future at all,” I said. “You don’t strike me as the kind of person to talk about marriage first.”

“You’ve changed the way I look at life.” I looked him in the eye and, subconsciously, my frown transformed into a smile. Even though he had a straight face, I could see everything he was feeling in his eyes. Blue.

—

We went to the doctor’s office three days later, as that was the only time we were available, to see Louis’ test results. He was evidently scared—I could tell by his strange silence. He avoided eye contact with me at all costs, except for some occasions, and on those, he would flash me a tight-lipped smile and continue thinking about what he was about to hear. I didn’t blame him for being so uptight.

He sat anxiously on the doctor’s table and was visibly practicing his breathing, his hair confined in a beanie and his fingers fumbling over one another to pass time. Before long, I stood up from my chair and stood between his wide open thighs, putting my arms around him.

“Everything’s gonna be okay,” I mumbled against his shoulder. His hands were shaking violently enough that pressing them hard into my back did not stabilize them. I couldn’t hear the fear in his voice, for he had yet to say a word, but rather I could feel it with all of my other senses; hell, fear was practically oozing out of him. “Hey,” I said sternly, drawing my head back so I could look him in the eye. “Whatever happens, you’ll make it. You’ve made it this far.”

He nodded his head, eyes turning pinker by the second. I didn’t want to make him speak in case it pushed him over the edge, so instead I brushed his hair off his forehead and held my lips against it for a matter of seconds. He grabbed my forearm from around his neck and traced his fingers down my wrist until finally clamping them around my hand, and that was when the door of the examination room eased open. Clearly we weren’t the only ones on edge.

“Afternoon,” said the brightly adorned woman. She had an American accent and Hispanic features: glossy coffee-toned hair, large salmon lips, and skin that matched well with her emerald green scrubs. “Hope I’m not interrupting anything, am I?”

“No,” Louis mumbled. I stole a glance at the doctor’s name badge—it read Sofia Peace—before stepping out of Louis’ way. She gave him a civil nod and shook his hand before sitting down on her backless chair.

“Let’s see here,” Dr. Peace said to herself, flipping through the pages attached to her clipboard. “Here we go.” She showed us her hectic little chart covered in a bunch of pluses, minuses, scientific phrases, and blue pen markings. It was a headache on a page.

“Now, Louis, it’s my understanding that you’re experiencing nausea, joint pain, shortness of breath, feeling cold…Is this all up to date?”

“It is,” he nodded. God, I hadn’t paid him one bit of attention. None of those symptoms sounded familiar except the last.

“Even though these are common symptoms of anemia, it’s difficult to differentiate between it and leukemia or other blood disorders at this stage because of the severity of your symptoms,” Dr. Peace told him. “And according to your charts…”

We waited for what felt like years. Personally, I was petrified. My hands grew sweaty and my heart raced, sounding like a snare drum in my poor ears. It was like reliving my mother’s diagnosis; the morbid half of my brain stirred up some of my old nightmares and that hand tremor that made it impossible to write for weeks. Louis’ breathing became staggered too, I noticed, although I could probably only hear it because Dr. Peace was taking so damn long to speak. When she finally looked up from her clipboard, she raised her softly penciled eyebrows ever so slightly and stated, “Everything’s negative.”

Louis and I both breathed in sharply. He widened his eyes and tipped his head down slightly as if to ask her for clarification; she went on to say Louis did _not_ in fact have cancer, just a very elevated case of anemia that required an equally elevated treatment plan. A tear slipped down his rugged face, and many more fell from my own eyes. We thanked Dr. Peace and she gave us a moment to embrace the news.

“While the results are negative,” she started after the moment passed, “there are a few things I should discuss with you before you leave. I understand you play competitive football, but it would be best if you sat out this season, or at least until you gain your health back. You don’t want another scare like this. So that means I’ll need to clear you in a couple of weeks after you pass the physical examination. And in order to do that, you’ve got to gain some weight and make some adjustments to your diet as well—or else your anemia could worsen more than it already has in recent months. I don’t want to keep you benched, Louis, I know this is difficult.”

“Got it,” Louis nodded along. He didn’t even seem fazed that he could no longer play. “Is there anything else?”

“For the time being, you should abstain from sex as well,” she tacked on. She then looked at me: “I assume you’re his partner? Now, I trust that you’re a responsible woman—it may be some time before you can have intercourse if that’s something you are used to, so please try and spend time together doing other things that occupy you. It’s good for your mental health—that goes for both of you—and it gives Louis time to recover from this episode he’s just been through. Obviously this one’s a judgement call, so you don’t need to wait for your physical to start having sex again.”

Louis and I agreed to Dr. Peace’s conditions. She recommended a daily supplement and a new prescription for him, and then we checked out, bearing enormous, sappy smiles. I called Gram and he called his mother to spread the good news.

“Louis, do you mind if we stop at the hospital before we go home?” I asked in the car after our giddy little phone calls had ended. He didn’t even have to answer; he switched lanes and held his hand out for mine to clasp onto, biting onto his bottom lip to stifle his smile. What a good day.

I knew that today my mother was having a chemotherapy session, during which she liked having visitors because it kept her distracted. I decided we shouldn’t tell her Louis didn’t have cancer, or else she would feel bad for herself—and pity would be just as bad as any of her side effects.

My father wasn’t in the room this time when we entered it, though that was only because he had to work. Mom had a sketchbook spread open on her lap and a kit of various pencil types hanging over the edge of the armchair; there was a grey smudge along the edge of her hand from where it had rubbed over the paper.

“Hey, Mom,” I greeted her, glad to see her awake for once despite the circumstances. She had her bare head hidden under a knitted cap.

“Hey, Char,” she waved. Her voice was muted and dreamy, so I could tell the chemicals had taken their toll on her. She looked over at Louis and smiled with excitement. “You must be Louis.”

“Very nice to see you,” he nodded charmingly. He pulled the two plastic chairs from the wall and placed them next to Mom’s more cushioned one so that we could chat for a little while. “Charlie’s told me loads about you.”

“Same for you,” she winked. I felt my face heat up; I thought she had been unconscious most times when I mentioned Louis to her, though it came as sort of a relief to have filled her in on our high and low points without even knowing it. Step one was done. “So you’re an art major, Louis?”

“I am,” he nodded. “I’m currently not very good in me courses, but what can you do other than suck it up?”

“That’s uni,” she laughed. “I’m working on a self portrait at the moment, though I think it’s going very downhill…”

She flipped her sketchbook around for us to see and I think my jaw unhinged when I saw what took up the page. The faint, chalky lines represented her pieces of hair, which were portrayed as no longer attached to her head but held up by some imaginary marionette-like force. Her face was contorted as though it were reacting to a nightmare, and her bone-thin hands were each stuck with IV tubes whose “fluid” consisted of words that were probably running through her head in real life.

“Wow—I don’t even know what to say,” Louis stammered, gazing in pure amazement at the thick paper. “That’s incredible. Deep. You’ve already outdone _all_ me artwork.”

“Oh, nonsense,” she blushed. “It’s just progress. I meant it to be more realistic and not so internal…”

“Progress?! You aced it,” Louis assured her, “no matter what your goal was.” I nodded along fanatically.

“Do you have anything else in there you’re open to share?” I asked her.

She gave me a knowing smile and held up one finger before flipping through sheets of cartridge paper that were completely devoured by graphite. When she reached what seemed like the last page of the entire portfolio, she showed us a rough drawing of an infant being cradled in hands of all different shapes, sizes, and colors.

“Is that me?” I asked, recognizing the particular expression on the baby’s face. The original photograph used to hang in the hallway in our Pennsylvania house, though with only one set of hands; I hadn’t seen it in ages.

“I think about it every day, so I wanted to test my memory,” she said modestly.

“You did that from your memory?” Louis asked. “By God, what d’you do for a living?”

“I’m a math teacher for fifth graders. Or maths, as you people call it.” All of us burst out into laughter, lightened by the circumstances of Louis and my mother.

“Do you think I could come and draw wif you sometime?” Louis asked, still amazed at my mother’s talents. I was too, to the point that I couldn’t speak anymore. Mom nodded her head eagerly and they discussed their schedules for a couple of minutes before Gram and Pappy came into the room. Gram said Mom had always been a shy artist and it made her happy that my mother took up the hobby again.

We left closer to dinner time and grabbed takeout from an overexpensive vegan restaurant—Louis was hesitant to spend so much on food, but Dr. Peace’s dietary recommendations had intimidated him—on the way back to Louis’ house. His mother and father enveloped him (and later me) in a hug upon entering the house, and then we ate in his room with dim, comfortable lights illuminating his pale bedroom furniture.

“Today has been so long,” Louis sighed at the end of our iron-and-protein meal. “Good, but long.”

“I told you things would be okay,” I reminded him, resting my head on his shoulder and my forearm across his abdomen.

“I really appreciate you being here for me, Charlie.” He bent his neck at an awkward angle just to kiss me on top of my head. I didn’t respond, just shut my eyes and absorbed his warmth. “None o’ me mates are anywhere near as supportive as you.”

“I’m sure they are,” I chuckled. “You just choose to spend all your time with me.”

“You certainly don’t seem too thrilled about that,” Louis accused me, flinching immediately in case I wanted to hit him for it. I made a face at him that contradicted his statement. “I mean, if you want, there is one way you could _prove_ it to me.”

“Such as?” I asked. He wriggled his eyebrows at me so I just rolled my eyes. “Dr. Peace said we should hold off.”

“But she didn’t say how long.”

“Well, I’m fairly certain she meant more than a few hours.”

He let out a high-pitched laugh and his legs shot into the air as his abs clenched. “_Duh_. It could be months before we can do it again, is what I’m getting at. Can’t hurt to do it just once today.”

“Louis, I said no.” I suddenly remembered the last time I had to say no to him; the reason was that his hips were black and blue from impact and I didn’t want to make it worse.

He whined and rolled onto his other side to face away from me and curled into a little crescent moon. “I fink what you’re doin’ to me is way worse for the male body than a bloody orgasm. Just sayin’.”

“What part of this conversation is turning you on?” I gawked, accidentally releasing a laugh.

“The gift of life. I just feel like celebratin’. Which, you know, I _could_ do by meself.”

“Louis,” I warned. He flipped back over and ripped the pillow out from under his head to stick between his legs. Then, in response, he grinned cheekily at me. “Stop being cute. This is serious.”

“This hard-on’s pretty serious too,” he said, pointing down at the pillow. “Don’t mind me cushion here. Just tryin’ not to poke you wif it, ‘cause it’s so damn _long_…”

I laughed and propped myself up on my elbows so I could kiss him—not to tease him, but to show him that I still appreciated his dorkiness, no matter how inappropriate.

He growled to humor me after my lips parted from his, then swooped up and bit onto my lip. Again, I nudged him for being so horny, though I knew at this point it was far too late to change his mind. I finally decided there couldn’t be much harm in “celebrating” with him. So I did.


	9. Châtiment

After three months, things started looking up even more. Louis convinced me to speak with the university’s psychologist once or twice and explain everything that was troubling me, and for the first time in a while, none of it had to do with Louis—except the short period where I thought he had leukemia, but that concern had diminished almost as soon as it arrived. I had a free consultation with the lovely woman, Dr. Hoffmann, and talked her through my nightmares which were dwindling away at this point as well. She offered me some wholesome advice and suggested I buy myself a journal, which I did. Though I didn’t use it very much—the idea of having one was therapeutic enough.

Mom was out of the hospital now and was doing much better. She had been suffering from multiple myeloma for a year at this point but was slowly healing ever since she underwent all of her treatment procedures in October. It was still expected that the cancer would hit her hard again soon, but because my parents knew the impact this had on me, they started to keep the specific details private. So all I knew at this point was that Mom was okay for the time being.

Louis and I were going to take a trip to Paris over the holiday break because, having been dating for nearly a year now, we were ready to go places. If our homes were any further away from campus, we might have even lived in a house together, but it was much cheaper to stay at our parents'. Luckily, though, we both had steady jobs at this point—he was a manager at a coffee shop, while I was earning money by tutoring students in German 101. (That inspired me to take up a linguistics major. You wouldn’t believe how cathartic it was for me to finally pick a path.)

Our flight would only be an hour or so. We woke up early in the morning so that we could spend the entire day wandering the Parisian streets. Before we even went to the airport, he snuck us into his coffee shop before hours and made two cups of overly sweet coffee; they’d be free for us that way, and he claimed he got off on mischief of breaking and entering. The sun hadn’t even risen by the time we were on the road.

“Are you excited?” he asked me in the car, grinning over at me. There was hardly a breath of life on the street at this hour.

He had been waiting for this day to come because Dr. Peace finally cleared him to fly. It was the first thing he’d been cleared to do, so this trip would give him something to reflect on while he was benched at practice. Scrawny little thing.

“You have no idea,” I gushed, lightly touching him on the forearm while we rode to Doncaster Sheffield Airport. I went to France with Gram and Pappy when I was little and had the time of my life, and right now all I wanted was to relive it, but with Louis. “I’m surprised my grandmother let me go.”

“Does she tend to put her foot down?” he asked. “I imagined your mum being the one to do that.”

“You know how it goes, spending half my life away from my parents and all,” I shrugged. He didn’t say anything, so I promised it was okay to laugh. “Look, we’re gonna have so much fun. I want an authentic _croissant_.”

“Sure thing, love,” he winked. “I’ll take you to the Eiffel Tower this evening. What do you say?”

“Woohoo!”

In just over two hours, we were there. Louis and I rented a car and checked into our hotel first thing after landing—that way, we would have the rest of the day to explore.

We went to many little boutiques, had our picture taken by a polite elderly man, and ate posh French food for lunch and dinner. It was nine o’clock before we knew it, so we went into a cafe to recharge. We had no intention to call it a day yet, so a cup of tea would do just fine.

I ordered some madeleines and a chai latte, and Louis had some type of pastry I couldn’t pronounce, plus a cup of ginger-lemon green tea. (He always emphasized the specific notes and flavors of his tea because it made him sound like a connoisseur—or so he says.) We were sitting on rustic-looking stools at the counter next to a very extensive bakery display when he fished for his phone for the first time in seemingly hours.

“Who’s that?” I asked, intrigued by the smile on his face while he typed out short text messages to whomever it was. He looked up and wiped his expression blank like a dry erase board, appearing not to have heard me. “Who’re you talking to?”

“Mate called Alex,” he said, pointing down at his phone for a brief moment. “She and I go way back. Two-thousand and seven, I reckon.”

“I’ve never heard of Alex,” I said.

“Sure you have.”

He returned his eyes to his phone screen and typed some more, laughing at whatever it was he said to Alex. I slumped my shoulders and sat quietly in the cafe, sipping on my latte with my face turned to the opposite direction.

A couple of minutes—yes, _minutes_—later, Louis finally put his phone down and touched me on the thigh. He asked what was wrong, so I sweetly explained that I just adored it when he spent our romantic getaway in Paris on his phone, talking to another girl.

He finished his tea in one large gulp and rolled his eyes. “Oi, come on, don’t start with me.”

“I have every reason to be upset with you,” I said sternly. “And for your information, no, I have _not_ heard of Alex till now.”

“Well I’m sorry,” he shrugged. “She and I went out a couple of times in that period when you hadn’t been here for three years. But there’s nothing going on, we’re just catching up.”

“That makes it so much worse,” I pouted. “Do you have to do that _now_ of all times and places?—Look, you obviously don’t care. Let’s just talk about this at the hotel.”

“Fine. _Merci beaucoup_.” He left a couple of euros on the countertop and saluted to the barista, slipping his jacket on. I hadn’t taken mine off, but I adjusted my Rovers beanie once we stood up, and we left the cafe in a tense silence. He put his hand on my back to shepherd me out of the building while we defied a crowd of incoming tourists. The street was still bright with commotion.

We walked one block to the hotel before he said, “I assume we’re skipping the Eiffel Tower for tonight then.”

“I didn’t say that.” But I assumed it too, and the sharpness of my voice made that very cut and dry.

Since neither of us was in any sort of mood to admire the grandeur of the city from thousands of feet in the air, we resolved to go back to our suite. The sun was long down and we’d had a long day, given that we were awake since four in the morning, so it might have been a better idea for the two of us to get some rest anyway. Besides, we couldn’t scream at each other in a hotel room, and that gave me hope of having a civil disagreement for once. I was scared to hear what might come out of his mouth if things got heated anyway.

Louis was impatient though. Between moments of silence, he would ask me random boyish questions like “Are you sure I never brought her up?” and “Can you at least tell me why you’re so upset?” and I told him we could dig into it soon. I just wanted to sit down before talking. I didn’t realize it until then, but my poor feet were throbbing.

Up in our room, which was too many stories high, I threw my hat down on a wooden trunk and sat on the edge of the spongy mattress, arms folded across my chest. Louis groaned like a little child when he saw how I was behaving.

“Trust me, I don’t want to argue either, but sometimes I don’t think you understand how relationships are supposed to work,” I complained. “This was supposed to be a nice little trip for us, and none of this would’ve happened if you weren’t so preoccupied texting this Alex character and neglecting me.”

“‘Neglecting,’” Louis chuckled at me, nodding his head down at the floor and then at me as if he’d come upon a peculiar realization. “Someone sounds a wee bit jealous.”

I lowered my eyes. “You don’t have any room to talk.”

“Nay, nay, that’s not me point,” he shook his head, still laughing at the notion. “Me point’s that you’re a hypocrite, and I find that hysterical. Quite out of character for ya, love, innit?”

“What are you doing, Louis?” I asked.

“Addressin’ the elephant in the room,” he said. “It was my idea to take you to Paris, after all. I hung out with you all fuckin’ day—not to imply it was a chore or anything—but I didn’t expect you to turn into an ingrate by what, ten fifteen? God forbid I check me texts for the first time since four in the morning.” He soon realized his commentary was futile and tried cleaning himself with, “Yes, I’m kind of an ass sometimes, including in the cafe, but I’m here wif you because I want to be. And there’s no one else I’d rather be with. Capiche?”

“You can’t smooth talk your way out of this one,” I sighed. “I don’t want you talking to her anymore. It doesn’t feel right, and not because I’m jealous.”

“Then why? Because we were fuck buddies three years ago?” he remarked. At this point I could tell he was more frustrated than humored.

“You _what_?”

Louis’ mouth dropped open, and all the words he could have said to make me fell better suddenly evaporated. He had clearly intended to keep that a secret from me. Thinking back now, he had dropped subtle hints the entire time that Alex was that one girl he lost his virginity to; she was the one who he “broke up” with while I was dating Michael.

“I said what I said,” he concluded, tottering on the balls of his feet and holding his hands behind his back like some kind of military officer. “She and I are on friendly terms now, and that’s that. I don’t have to stop talking to her.”

“You are despicable, Louis.”

“D’you know what? I stand me case. I thought you knew I wanted to marry you, Charlie. You constantly preach that I have nothing to worry about wif Harry, but look at yourself now! How the tables have turned!”

I stood up. “The problem here is that you had sex with this girl, and Harry just kissed me for New Year’s when he and I were still strangers! Can you not see how different the circumstances are?”

“Harry’s a massive flirt,” Louis told me. “In fact, all me mates are. Surprised Liam didn’t jump ya. So I had no clue what that kiss could have turned into. I couldn’t just watch it happen ‘cause I loved you too much.”

“Stop it!” I hollered. He put his arms up in surrender. “You can’t just slip in how much you love me and want to marry me when we’re having a fight, Louis. It’s like you can’t ever tell me these things _unless_ we’re fighting, and I don’t know what to think about that.”

“Well it’s not like you’ve ever returned the favor,” he accused me, taking a step closer as if it would daunt me. “When was the last time you did?”

“All the time!” I challenged. “Maybe you were too busy texting Alex to notice.”

“That’s it,” Louis declared. “I’m going for a walk. Don’t come wif me.” He disappeared with heavy footsteps, leaving me alone in our unlit hotel room. I turned the bedside lamp on and flopped back down on the bed, wondering where we went wrong and when. Right when things were looking up.


	10. Saturnine

It was after midnight when Louis finally returned to the hotel room. I had been sleeping but started awake when I heard the door click, and he emerged holding a matte black shopping bag that looked like it came from a designer brand. I blinked to make sure my tired eyes weren’t deceiving me.

He was certainly refreshed after what happened earlier; when he drew nearer, I noticed he smelled like cigarette smoke and was smiling in my general direction upon entering the room, his phone in hand and the collar of his jacket flipped up to block the weather out. His nose and cheeks were rosy from the biting cold. He came and sat on my side of the bed, gazing down at me for a few seconds before I decided to show signs that I was awake.

“Hey,” he said softly, brushing my hair out of my face for me. I sat up and fixed my pillows behind me. He moved closer when he had more room and set the bag on his lap, insisting, “You’ve got to see this.”

“What is it?” I yawned.

“I saw it in a window on me walk and thought it’d look brilliant on you,,” he commented while I picked the bag off of his lap. There were glossy letters on the side of it, I noticed, but the brand name was in French and unheard of in my book. I looked into the bag for only a second before reaching my hand in and withdrawing a flat wooden box. It looked rustic and beachy on the outside; I felt like I could only open it in Normandy.

I flipped the box open and inhaled sharply at what lay inside of it. There was a pear-shaped diamond threaded onto a necklace, and the chain was dazzled with smaller diamonds all around. If they were real, they had to have cost him his entire life’s savings, but even if they weren’t, I felt that I owed him my life. This was the most stunning piece of jewelry I’d ever received, let alone seen.

“You know what made it even more perfect for you?” he asked. “It’s called _Le Capricorne_.”

“Louis,” I practically whimpered. I set the box down onto the nightstand beside me and threw my arms around him, squeezing my eyes closed with immense love.

“I take it you liked it,” he laughed, rubbing my back. I let go ever so slightly and inclined my face toward his, moving graciously slow to savor the feeling. I could have suffocated in his smoky aura because it was so overpowering in the moment, but given the choice, I would wear his scent on my deathbed. He met my lips with his and I felt like we were levitating together, clawing each other because intimacy wasn’t nearly enough. Maybe it was because I was intoxicated with sleep, but I felt like a starving child holding a staring contest against a juicy, halved peach. Suddenly I didn’t care so much about the necklace anymore. Just Louis.

—

In the morning I was a puddle of blue. Tranquility overcame me even long after I had woken up; Louis was asleep on the opposite end of the bed, and I lay there with my eyes pointed towards the ceiling for upwards of an hour before moving a muscle. It was physically impossible for me to get up.

The profundity of what happened the night before was ingrained in my mind. While Louis was showering, I had stolen a glimpse of the price tag on the diamond necklace and sobbed about it because it was close to the cost of his medical bills, but I was too afraid to tell him I saw the amount, so I left everything unsaid. I was having flashbacks to the very first birthday present he gave me, where I teared up because it was so sentimental. This was a whole other level.

Now I knew, more than ever, that he was serious about what he said during our fight. He was going to settle down with me one day, even if he couldn’t express that to me at any given time. I couldn’t think about anything except that until he finally woke up.

“Morning, love,” Louis hummed, rolling over to my side of the bed. His hair was soft and clean now and it felt nice against my skin.

“Good morning,” I answered. He put his freezing hand under my shirt and kept it on my stomach, absorbing my body’s heat. “Are you warm enough?”

“Plenty,” he nodded. “We should get breakfast.”

“In a bit.” I placed my hand on top of his, the fabric of my shirt separating our two palms, and shut my eyes. Admittedly I fell asleep for another hour, so I was relieved to know Louis had gotten up by himself and brought breakfast back to our room by the time I was finally awake.

“Good morning, sleeping beauty,” he grinned at me, taking paper cups of tea out of a drink holder. He brought one of them to me and kissed me on the forehead.

“Sorry,” I laughed at myself, sipping from the steaming tea he gave me. Within a couple of minutes I could tell the caffeine and my extra hour of slumber had kicked in.

“I was thinking we could see the Eiffel Tower tonight,” he said, caressing my thigh. I smiled at his proactivity. “You in?”

I hummed in response and flicked my eyes to the nightstand, where the wooden box containing my necklace lay.

“What do you say we go somewhere fancy tonight?” I suggested, opening the box to admire the diamonds again. I tried not to show my inner melancholy about the matter by smiling down at the jewels, hoping Louis’ family secretly consisted of millionaires so they could pay it off in the blink of an eye. But I’d been in his house before, so I knew that wasn't true. “I need to make proper use of this thing.”

Louis hesitated for a moment, then moved his hand from my thigh up to my shoulder. “Are you all right, Charlie?”

“What? I-I’m fine,” I assured him, shutting the box abruptly. He nodded, unconvinced, and waited for me to go on. “Really, we’re in Paris. I love life right now.”

“You seem off,” he reasoned with me, looking down at his lap. “You look…blue. Did you mean to tell me to sod off last night, or did I beat you to it?”

“No, nothing like that,” I shook my head, adjusting so I could put my arm around his waist. “Do you remember when we turned fifteen? What we gave each other?”

“Hell yeah,” he nodded, tugging at his jacket collar. I chuckled.

“Do you remember how I nearly cried at your letter, so I didn’t finish reading it?”

“Oh, God,” Louis groaned. “Please don’t tell me you finished it just now. For a ‘fast reader,’ you’re bloody slow.”

“No, no, forget the letter,” I said. “Point is, I was so touched by what you gave me even though you _barely_ knew me, and I felt horrible for giving you some designer jacket as if it compensated for something.”

“You said it wasn’t designer.” He pointed his finger at me accusingly.

“Louis.”

“Sorry, sorry, carry on.”

I sighed, eyeing the box again. “I looked up how much this thing cost you and I’m just having trouble accepting it. I can’t believe you did this for me.”

“Did you happen to look at the receipt, love?” he asked me cautiously, though at the time I didn’t know why. I’d only seen the price on an all-French advertisement, so I just shook my head, but this prompted more questions: “Right, so then what’ll it take for you to believe you deserve this? Are you happy?”

“Extremely,” I assured him. “These last couple of months have been heaven for me, all things considered…you know? So I don’t even know how to react.” I felt tears stinging the corners of my eyes and I smiled with embarrassment. Louis smiled too, probably out of habit, and pulled me into his chest.

“Obviously something’s up,” he said to me. I could sense the concern in his tone. “Spit it out, love.”

“It’s stupid,” I said. “I just have to pay you back somehow. We have so many major fights that I feel like we’re on the wrong track, and then you pull _this_…I-I just hate feeling like I need a backup plan.”

“Think of it as a promise ring,” he offered. “Except, you know, it’s a promise diamond necklace.”

“Doesn’t that make it more than just a promise?” I asked, a wrinkle forming in my brow. And I knew that was the wrong thing for me to say at the time because Louis’ eyes twinkled as soon as he heard it.

“Well, I should hope so,” he told me. “And that’s another thing I wanted to talk to you about.”

“Hmm?”

He pulled away from me and made sure I was listening intently by giving me a look. “I can’t go on just _saying_ I love you and not doing anything about it.”

“So what now?”

He looked down in search of words and gave me another look, only this one was blank. I couldn’t read him if I shined a UV light in his face. “Come on, let’s eat.”


	11. Troth

“Did you know you’ve lost your accent?” Louis asked me while we were sitting at a circular table in the campus coffee shop. He had to work today but still wanted to take me somewhere, so he spent his break with me.

I blushed. “Have I?”

“See? Americans say ‘Did I?’ instead of ‘Have I?’” he smiled at me while he sipped on his tea and stowed one tattooed fist into his hoodie pocket. “Me regional linguistics professor taught me that.”

“Mine didn’t. Do I use any British slang?” I inquired further. No one had ever told me I sounded different.

“Not so much, which is weird,” he shrugged, and then he yanked on the fabric of his hoodie. “Oh, but a few hours ago you called this a jumper.”

“I did not!” I denied. He laughed at me, leaning back against his chair. “Well, I’m glad you liked your present. Happy birthday, Lou.”

“You too, darling.”

We exchanged gifts back at my parents’ house. They had only finished the move-in process while we were away in Paris, so my room was still relatively empty. Louis’ present to me was a very large painting of my mother now that she was in good health, plus a letter of course, and then he helped me hang up the canvas. My room felt a million times more like home after that. In return, I bought him a Canon camera because he had expressed that he wanted to take up photography. It suited his major anyway, so it was a good investment on my end.

Our innocent conversation was suddenly interrupted when a girl who looked remarkably similar to me, but blonder and perkier, bolted for our table in excitement. She gazed at Louis with the most entranced expression I’d ever seen; he didn’t turn his face away from me but moved his eyes to see who it was, and then he turned florid for a brief second.

“Alex, hey,” he said, adjusting uncomfortably in his chair. I drew in a quiet, unsettled breath.

“Hey! Happy birfday, you animal!” she exclaimed, pulling a chair from a nearby table to sit with us. Louis nodded at her gratefully and looked me in the eye, begging and pleading for me to forgive him without using any actual words. “How was Paris?”

“Lovely,” he shrugged, pulling his tea cup up to his lips again for lack of any words to say.

Alex put her hand on Louis’ arm and tried her darndest to get some sort of reaction out of him, but he remained as quiet as a mouse. It wasn’t until she started blatantly flirting with him that I decided it was my turn to talk.

“So,” I said loud and clear. She turned to look at me and raised her microbladed eyebrows. “Nice to meet you. I’m Charlie.”

Her heart-shaped mouth fell open and she nodded her head along with my words. “_You’re_ Charlie! Louis, why didn’t you say anyfing?!” She nudged him rather hard on the arm and so I cleared my throat.

“Well I’m sure he would have, had you given him the ch—” I started, but Louis made a slicing motion in front of his neck to get me to stop, and his chair groaned under him as this happened. Alex just smiled like the blonde she really was.

“Alex, if you wouldn’t mind,” Louis finally said, making a gesture at me. “I’m on a date here.”

“No worries! Just ring me later!” She began to stand up and Louis followed her, planted his hand on her shoulder, and whispered something to her that I couldn’t quite interpret from across the table. Alex just nodded her head and plodded away.

“How was she accepted into uni? I didn’t even know she went here,” I complained, shaking my head and placing my forehead in my hands. Louis reached across the table to steal my attention.

“I’m so sorry that happened,” he said. “She‘s never been _that_ upfront wif me, but I can see why you got so upset about it in Paris now.”

“Thanks,” I mumbled. “What did you say to her just now?”

“Told her if she didn’t sod off, there’d be an issue,” he shrugged. That brought a smile to my face. I said another “thanks,” but this time it was sincere. He nodded back and eyed his shiny wristwatch before announcing that his break was over.

“Come over after dinner, okay?” I told him before we stood up. “Sorry you have to work today. They should’ve given you off.”

“I know,” Louis sighed, “but I’ll survive. ‘Ey, where do you think you’re going?”

He grabbed my arm to stop me from leaving the cafe and bent to kiss me, his breath tasting of mint from the tea he had just consumed. “Catch you later, love.” We went our separate ways—his behind the counter and mine out to my car—and didn’t see each other again for four-ish hours.

The occasion obviously being my birthday, Mom cooked a good old-fashioned American dinner: deep-dish pizza with apple pie for dessert. Louis came over to have some pie with us as he promised he would, and we went downstairs for some more private celebrating.

The basement had an open floor plan. It was unfinished and cold except for the minor effort made by a space heater that I placed directly in front of the sofa, which was covered in blankets for Louis’ sake. He was laying on top of me, kissing my neck and jaw in various places while I attempted to talk with him. From an outside eye we would probably look like quite a romantic ensemble.

“I can’t believe it’s almost 2011 already,” I said, my hands cradling his head as he left marks all over my skin. He only hummed in response, navigating north to bite on my earlobe, leaving a slobbery trail underneath it. I shut my eyes and asked him what his New Year’s resolution was while my fingers knotted his hair.

“To have _loads_ of sex,” he teased, so I shoved him off of me, bearing a huge, lively smile. “Aww, come on. You know me resolution.”

“Picking me every type of flower isn’t a valid answer,” I reminded him. He scoffed at me, balancing up on his knees and looking down at me in mock skepticism.

“You ungrateful shit. Talk to the hand,” he shook his head, holding his hand up in my face. I reacted by interlocking my fingers in his, at which his cheeks became inflamed and he lost his sarcastic facade. I thought back on the night we got together, where he was so drunk he grew shy at my every move whenever it involved skinship.

“Do you remember anything from New Year’s 2008?” I asked, smiling at the memories. He chuckled, hiding his face in his free hand. I took that as a yes. “So you’re telling me you _weren’t_ blackout drunk?”

“Not quite,” he laughed at himself, “but if I had taken _one_ more shot…”

“Maybe you would’ve peed in the sink,” I suggested.

“Hey! What happens in Bradford stays in Bradford!”

I wrapped my other hand around his and brought it near my face, intending to pin a kiss onto his fingers, but his whole torso came down and crushed our hands in between our bodies. After he fell, he rested his cheek right on top of my chest—probably for boyish reasons, but I didn’t feel like questioning it—and sighed very happily. I slipped one hand out from in between us and placed it on the back of his head. Whenever we were this close, I felt peaceful and at home.

“I love you, Louis,” I crooned, petting his hair. His hot breath clouded onto my arm when he chuckled again, and he looked at me straight in the eye before telling me the same thing. His eyes were so beautiful. Blue.


	12. Asunder

Come summertime, Louis and I became very busy. What with our jobs—we’d both gotten new ones since school was over for the season—we had little time for each other, but I found that that didn’t bother me very much. After all, I had spent more than half of my time with him over the last six years. Also, now that he had been cleared for everything, he preferred to play football in his spare time. Just as well.

I had befriended a girl named Valerie in my forensic anthropology class. We originally bonded over our fascination in the television series _ Bones _ and the fact that we liked watching it much more than the lectures.

Valerie and I decided one day to go to the beach together. It was hours and hours away from Doncaster, but we told ourselves it would be worth it because our lives had become so slow, apart from our bustling jobs, and a little day trip would do no harm. In fact, it would serve as a comprehensive healing period for me (but I wasn’t quite aware of this until long after the fact). The weather was much too nice for us to stay indoors anyway.

Unfortunately, we didn’t get there until sunset, but that turned out to be more than okay. The water was beautiful. It reflected peach and white and lavender from the shadows of clouds all while the sky itself faded into a warm yellow; I thought of Louis immediately and texted him a photo of my view.

“Who’re you texting?” Valerie asked me, taking her sheer coverup off so only her bikini top and shorts were left. “Can’t believe you’ve got a signal out here, but me phone’s shit, so that may be why.”

“Just sending my boyfriend a picture of the sky,” I told her, slipping my phone back into my bag. “He’s an art major. I thought he’d appreciate it.”

“Ah, now is this Jordan or Sam?” she asked me. Those were the people I did my term project for German with, and they were actually both female.

“Neither. His name’s Louis.”

She pulled her sunglasses away from the bridge of her nose and eyed me with curiosity. “You’ve never mentioned this lad!”

“That so?” I wondered, thinking how odd it was to not have spoken a word about him. Valerie was incredibly academic, so I had no doubt that she would remember whether I ever mentioned him. I realized now that I was so used to having him around every day that I expected everyone around me to automatically know who he was. For playing such a major role in my life, Louis had certainly lost touch with me over the weeks.

“Let’s grab a bite, and then you can tell me all about him,” she said, interrupting my borderline corruptive thoughts, for which I was thankful. We settled in at a Turkish restaurant and ate our hearts out, forgetting to even mention Louis until after the bill had been paid. The food was too good to talk through anyway; of course this was just an excuse not to talk about him because I didn’t exactly know what to say. Just one month earlier, I wouldn’t have even gone on the trip if he weren’t invited. How times change.

My entire chest sank when I drew that conclusion. Not just my heart but my lungs, my ribcage, my esophagus, and vocal chords. Things were so different now that we didn’t see each other every day. I sipped on my Uludağ soda and tried my hardest to think of ways to describe Louis in a way that was true to him, and not just some abbreviated account of him that I might make up subconsciously. Valerie was all ears, so I had to come up with _ something_.

“We met at a Rovers game in 2005,” I started, “but we didn’t start going out until January 2009. After that, _ sheesh_…so much has happened.”

“You don’t sound too stoked about that,” Valerie observed, tilting her head sympathetically at me. “Reckon that’s why I haven’t heard of this Louis till today?”

I couldn’t figure out what to say to her. There would be no penalty for being totally honest, except maybe an eternal regret smoldering inside me like an ember, but I still couldn’t come up with any dialogue. She took notice of how troubling this was for me and asked me some more innocent questions, such as what our first date was, how he’d been doing…. Everything was fine until she finally asked me where the relationship was headed. And I think she asked it knowing what it would do to me.

“Well,” I sighed. We were walking aimlessly around the little lamplit town next to the beach so I knew I had time to gather my thoughts. “I can’t see myself living in a world without him, but every time he mentions marriage and the future to me, I just shut up. I can’t tell you how many times it’s turned into an argument.”

“Rewind, rewind,” she shook her head, stopping in the middle of the pavement. “He’s talked about marriage? All by himself, no pressure?”

“Well yeah,” I said. Valerie’s eyes widened as though her point was written across her face in neon, flashing letters. “He talks about our future all the time.”

“Honey,” Valerie said, placing her hand on my bare shoulder. “If that doesn’t make you the least bit happy, you’ve got it bad.”

I didn’t say anything, so she continued telling me off: “He might be the _ only _lad who hasn’t got commitment issues! Why aren’t you running after him?”

I couldn’t bring myself to walk for another minute or so, so we found a bench and lingered on it for that moment. There I was in the middle of the dim sidewalk with Turkish lemonade in my hand, contemplating what had happened in the last chapter of my life. Until then, I had never looked at it as anything but a marvel that we were still together, but now it was erring on the side of wasteful.


	13. Désolée

The twelfth of August will always be an important date to me. In particular, the one in 2011 is stamped on my heart because it was the day Louis finally executed his promise of proposing to me.

It was a Friday evening, and we were at Sandall Park, a little scenic area in our childhood neighborhood. I don’t know if you’ll recall, but that was the location where I was supposed to meet him right after we met at the Rovers game so many years ago. Going there as an adult brought me so much nostalgia—enough to suffocate in—but more importantly, being there with Louis made the whole encounter noteworthy.

The tips of leaves had begun burning into orange and yellow hues, the air still crisp and warm, the grass clippings fresh enough to dye the soles of my shoes green. Louis and I strolled hand-in-hand along a meandering path until we reached a little bench covered in dried-up lichens and sat down on it. It croaked under our weight—I suppose it had been there since long before we met.

“So not to make you feel like proper shit,” Louis began, and I rolled my eyes before he even finished his thought, “but this is where I sat and waited for you after writing you that letter in oh-five.”

“Aww,” I whined, smushing my face against his shoulder. I felt him turn his head down toward me and nod to confirm his statement. “Can you imagine how different our lives would be if I had read it on time?”

“Who knows where we’d be right now?” he reflected. “But I wouldn’t change it for the world.”

“Me neither.” I lifted my face and kissed him gently on the cheek, melting at the sensation of his stubble against my lips. He flashed me a closed-mouth smile, one that really showed he was delighted.

“You’ll find this funny,” he said, rotating on the bench so his lower back leaned against the iron arm rest. “I was talking to me mates during practice and they’re all amazed that you’ve been wif me this long.” His hand grabbed for mine subconsciously; I don’t know if he knows this, but he looks much brighter when he’s touching me. (And sometimes I hate that because his fingers are considerably colder than the rest of him.)

“Why’s that?” I asked, squeezing his hand in return.

“It’s kind of a running joke on the team that I’m not committed to anyfing,” he explained, “‘cause I spent all that time benched. Harry’s bloody _ shocked _ that we’re still an item, but he refuses to admit he’s proud of me. I know he’s still cautious round you.”

“You can’t blame him,” I teased, remembering the confrontation we had on the night I realized Harry went to uni with us. “But hey, I’m happy to prove those guys wrong if it means being with you.”

He blushed a little, and nodded enthusiastically: “It’s got me thinkin’ about all those times I’ve told you I’d get you to settle down with me one day, and not just to prove people wrong. You remember how we talked about it in Paris?”

“Sure I do.”

My heart was thrumming faster. I heard Valerie in my head, telling me he was a keeper and that she loved him already, although her dreamy voice dwindled away as fast as it came.

“Well,” he sighed, opening his jacket slightly and tucking his free hand inside, perhaps because the interior was fleecy. That’s what I convinced myself in the moment, anyway—but in all actuality, that was just to slow my anxious heartbeat, because deep down, I knew what was coming. “I don’t know about you, but I love what we’ve got and what we’ve been through, and I think it’s about time to show everybody how serious we are.”

_ Sure, I can get down with that_. I picked up that he was going to continue, so I held still. In fact, it pained me to move.

Just then, he withdrew a small wooden box with gold hinges. I froze in place involuntarily.

“So, Charlie, know that I really mean it this time, when I say I want to spend the rest of me life with you.” He flipped the box open and the world grew dim; the diamond within seemed to absorb every ounce of sunlight around us, every hue of the sky as the sun was beginning to set. It was a shining beacon on a deserted island in the black of night. I practically had to look away to keep from going blind, but I looked into Louis’ sapphire eyes and swooned once again at the marvel. “What do you say?”

I was feeling every emotion known to man, especially the dark, drowning ones, so the best I could do was nod my head at him and collapse him in a bear hug so that he could no longer see my face. There was no telling what I’d do next.

—

“It came with the necklace in Paris,” Louis said with pride, his eyes focused on my left hand. I glanced down too and, once again, the room seemed darker for a moment. That diamond was _ big_.

We were back from Sandall Park and were standing around his mother’s kitchen as we waited for his parents to return home. Louis wanted to break the news as soon as possible, but I was too troubled to call my family. I had sent a brief text to my mother and refused to pick up my phone afterwards so as to avoid seeing her enthusiastic response. Right then, I didn’t think I could handle her thoughts because I had to swallow whatever mine were first.

“Is that why you asked if I saw the receipt?” I wondered, avoiding the topic of marriage at all costs. My heart was inflamed. Throbbing and blue. Choking.

He nodded at me, his eyes fixed on the teardrop jewel that now adorned my ring finger. To make up for my awkward nature, I said, “It’s really beautiful. Thank you.”

“You’re not supposed to fank me for it,” Louis laughed, squeezing me on the shoulder. I just nodded submissively because I didn’t know how else to feign happiness, and so I kept my eyes down. “Oi. Charlie.”

“Hmm?” I turned my eyes up draggingly slowly and saw that his face wasn’t so smitten but was riddled with concern now. He didn’t have to say anything else for me to know I blew my cover, but it was about time anyway. Bitter tears brimmed my eyes at once.

I hesitated a bit too long, apparently, so Louis gave me a look that urged me to speak even though I desperately didn’t want to. I barely knew where to start.

“All you’ve done throughout our entire relationship is drink the Kool-Aid,” I cried to him, my heart clenching in on itself. After seeing the look in his eyes, I was unable to keep my thoughts to myself any longer. “You think everything that happens between us is okay because it’s you and me. I didn't know it until now, but every time we get into an argument, our whole dynamic changes. I just can’t see us getting any better by the time we’re out of college, and I'm too hurt to carry on this way. I'm so sorry, Louis.”

His face went blank as he reacted. “You didn’t have to say yes.”

“What other choice did I have? To say no and humiliate you?” I wept. “You asked me something with _ one _ acceptable answer and I didn’t know how to say anything _ but _ yes.”

“Right, ‘cause women go through proposal training courses, don’t they?” Louis muttered to himself, wresting his hands from me and spinning around so his shoulder blades became eye level with me. He brought his palms to his face but I couldn’t see what else he was doing, except that his shoulders were heaving slowly. “I-I shouldn’t have said anything…sorry, love.”

His voice was so hurt, embarrassed.

And it was the apology that killed me the most.

“Please don’t apologize,” I asked of him. From behind, I noticed him shaking his head at himself ever so slightly, and I could only imagine how upset he looked from the front view. That idea didn’t help dam the flow of tears from my eyes; soon I couldn’t see _ anything _ anymore.

I staggered forward and secured my arms around his bone-thin waist, pressing my face into his back, shamelessly sobbing into it. Louis’ cold hands touched mine where they met, sending shivers through my wrists and to the rest of my body, but that cold was nothing compared to the emptiness I would feel for the next chapter of my life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> did anyone get tickets to louis' world tour?! i finally did! i'm so excited!!


	14. Renaissance

Pappy lived a long, happy life from 1943 to 2018. Unfortunately, one week prior to his seventy-fifth birthday, Death planted its long, knobby fingers upon his shoulder and guided him away from us. He had a stroke, and no one was home with him when it happened.

Gram and Mom were unbearably torn by this, but my father only remained as deeply melancholic as he had ever been. I, however upsetting the circumstances were, recognized that his time had come and the family was better off now. I took my reaction as a sign that I’d grown up over the years after being so worn out by a different kind of defeat. A different type of love of mine had gotten away from me, so I was more prepared for this type to go, too.

The year I turned twenty-seven, I started teaching an entry-level German course at Hungerhill School. I had finished college in the top fifteen percent of my class and became fascinated by German culture as well as the language itself; I had what Germans call _sprachgefühl_, or a feeling for the language, meaning it came almost as naturally to me as English. So I like to say I never worked a day of my life, except there was that brief period where I fried various types of meats in afternoons for minimum wage—and that was Hell Week.

The summer after I earned this teaching position, I went to various German cities with a colleague called Jane. I loved all of the places we stopped at, but my favorite by far was Munich; the area was steeped in ancient German tradition and, although I’m not proud of it, many of my memories there were enlivened by beer. Clearly Jane and I were _not_ there strictly for business; we had a wonderful time together.

Back in Doncaster, my family had completely healed from its loss. It had been just under a year since my beloved grandfather passed away and the rest of us were finally used to life without him. Given that my parents lived in America for most of my childhood, their distance only made the incident worse for their mental health, so needless to say, I was proud that they were all thriving by the time I came back from Germany.

Gram had formed some innocent friendships with Pappy’s coworkers at the company, so she was invited to their annual Rovers game. It took place shortly after my trip. She decided to bring me along, claiming she needed to catch up with me. “For old time’s sake,” she said. I figured it couldn’t hurt to go and see a football game after all these years—besides, the opposing team was German, so I was especially intrigued.

I showed up in a pair of athletic leggings, Birkenstocks from my uni days, a Hunterhill T-shirt, and of course, my ancient Rovers beanie. There were a couple of loose threads coming out of various places in it and the pompom was barely spherical anymore, but it fit me snugly and I knew that despite my interest in the opponents, I simply couldn’t attend in favor of anyone other than Donny. In the athletic world, that was like treason.

We were in a skybox for the game and had an advantageous view. Going to a Rovers game became a company tradition around 2007, or so I was told, so the CEO started renting this very skybox every year and only the top salespeople were invited. Pappy was number one for as long as anyone could remember, Gram told me, so she was as dear to his superiors as he had been.

Never mind that the Selkirks followed close behind Pappy, so technically Addison and Imogen were now the employees of the year, but they were civil enough to offer Gram the fruit basket they received as a reward for their skills. And when she accepted it, she gave me a sly smirk and kissed the wine bottle that came with it.

Admittedly, I knew the Selkirks would be there and tried my best not to think about the tension that would exist in that puny little skybox once we were all crammed in—but I was actually overwhelmed with joy upon meeting eyes with Mr. Addison Selkirk and his beautiful, blue-eyed wife. I could never see in them the nuisance and negativity that Pappy did, probably on account of my not being colleagues with them.

“Is that Charlie Marshall?” Mr. Selkirk grinned as soon as our eyes met. His were dashing, almost the same hue as his son’s except doused with more grey and black. He was older and wiser, more forgiving and straight-to-the-point. A respectable man.

“Mr. Selkirk!” I exclaimed, crossing the small room to give the man a hug. Gram was preoccupied, gazing out the glass wall down at the field which was completely empty for the time being. The game was due to start in about fifteen minutes.

“It’s been donkey’s years,” he said to me, placing his hand on my upper back as we talked. “Imogen, come say hello!”

His wife—the thinnest, youngest fifty-three-year-old woman I had ever seen—whirled around, the ends of her blazer thrashing against the air resistance. Her eyes broke into little arcs and she gasped in greeting. “Charlie! How’ve you been, sweet pea?”

“I’ve been great,” I said while she shook my hand, “and how about you?”

“Just wonderful,” she gushed. “The company’s finally acknowledged us, so we’re becoming more comfortable. You know how it was back in the day.” She gestured behind her with her thumb. It made me smile that she still trusted me with this insight.

I thought back to the first time I went to the Selkirk residence. It was small, but in a way, I liked it more than Gram and Pappy’s home because everything in it was homemade, authentic, sentimental. I simply couldn’t relate and that was what made it so personal to me. The presents her son gave me were sweet and well thought-out, whereas mine to him were expensive and trending. And I always felt a tear in my heart whenever I reminisced about all of our gift exchanges because looking back, I never valued them for what they were truly worth. On top of the Selkirks’ formerly low rankings in the sales company, their endless hospital bills and immense love for football games certainly did not help their income. I would have never seen Mrs. Selkirk in a blazer, nor would she have so few wrinkles on her forehead if she were still struggling with money. I flashed her a sincere smile and nodded along with her words.

“Come on, love, you’re bugging me out!” Mr. Selkirk teased after a little appreciative pause. I didn’t have any clue what he could be referring to, so I just tilted my head. “Aren’t you going to ask about Louis?”

“I was waiting for you to bring ‘im up,” Mrs. Selkirk chuckled at me in addition, clasping her hands together. I felt my face getting pinker by the second, but I laughed too. I hadn’t thought about Louis for more than five minutes at a time since our breakup eight years prior.

_Come to think of it_, I thought to myself, _today is the twelfth of August_.

“How is he?” I asked in a softer tone, probably beaming with joy or nostalgia or a mixture of both. He and I had stopped communicating entirely, but the mere thought of him made my heart bounce around in my hollow chest. If I waited any longer to ask about him, my heart could have become concussed. My fingers wound up intertwined with one another while we spoke of him, almost like one of them was Louis’ hand and not my own.

“He’s just lovely,” Mrs. Selkirk gushed to me. “He just got home from LA. He’s taken up photography, you know.”

“D’you know what?” I began. “I remember him talking about photography in uni. I never would have thought he’d make a career out of it, though.”

“Yeah! And he still uses that camera you gave him,” she informed me. “He and his Irish mate are working for a web journal based in London, though they’ve got headquarters all round the UK and the States.”

“That sounds right up his alley,” I reflected, nodding at Mr. and Mrs. Selkirk. “Does he still watch soccer like he used to?”

“Bloody hell, it’s all he talks about!” Mr. Selkirk bellowed, a hand on his stomach. He reminded me of Santa Claus. “In fact, he’s havin’ an interview with James Coppinger right now.”

“That’s a…midfielder, no?” I asked, and when the Selkirks nodded their heads proudly, it dawned on me that they meant Louis was at the game right then and there. They gave each other a knowing glance and asked if I’d like to meet with him; I couldn’t think of any reason not to, and they promised they’d have Louis come to the skybox at some point or other that night.

The sun had gone down by the time I received any other word of Louis. I was startled when a brown-haired man came into the skybox with some frosted beer cans in his right hand and a portable microphone in his other, but I didn’t recognize him; he walked up to the Selkirks before anything else and offered them each a can before setting his microphone down on a round table. It certainly wasn’t Louis, but Mrs. Selkirk gave me a look that beckoned me over, so I figured this boy was someone important to them.

“Niall, meet Charlie,” she said as I approached. He gave me his hand to shake and I returned the favor, nodding my head in greeting. “Charlie, this is Niall. He works for that web journal with Louis.”

“Oh!” I blurted out, my eyebrows shooting upwards. This probably meant their interview was complete. “Lovely to meet you.”

“Nice to meet ya,” he reciprocated, shaking my hand cordially. “How do you know Louis?”

“Irish” clearly meant something different in England than it did in the United States. Having been raised partly over there, it was unusual to hear an Irish person speak with an actual Irish brogue—hell, _I_ was Irish—but his voice was music to my ears.

“He and I actually met at a Rovers game,” I said. “But that was back in 2005. We lost touch.”

His neck jutted forward in disbelief and he pointed a finger subtly at me. “Dat was _you_? Charlie Marshall, is it? Louis’ told me so much about you!”

“Is that so?” I grinned. He nodded eagerly, pulling a chair out for me at the table his microphone was on. We both took a seat because, by the looks of it, this would be a long conversation.

“He told me you were his Mary Austin fer de longest time,” Niall continued, opening his own beer can. I melted at his reference; I never thought or hoped Louis would call me something like that after all these years.

Upon realizing he had only brought three beers up to the skybox, Niall offered me the first sip of his, but I politely declined it. “In fact, I think I would have met you at a buddy’s Christmas party if my parents let me.”

“You mean Zain’s New Year’s party?” I corrected him, smiling at the memory. His eyes lit up as he realized I was correct. “I wish you had been there! Louis got _so_ smashed.”

“Don’t worry,” he assured me, “I’ve heard dat story loads of times from Liam—you know Liam?—so now Louis can’t have a drink around me anymore ‘cause he knows I’ll roast ‘im. Absolutely flame ‘im!”

“That’s hilarious,” I chuckled, knowing that it was probably true. He slapped the table as he laughed, shaking his head at me. “So you and Louis work together. Are you partners, or?”

“Not officially, but we team up whenever it’s possible,” he told me. “He takes absolutely amazin’ pictures fer me articles. Today he actually recorded an interview I did wit’ James Coppinger.”

“He’s branching out,” I observed.

Niall took a sip from his Guinness and eyed me up and down—what he could see of me, anyway, since the table was blocking my bottom half—with the kind of look in his eye you’d give to the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel or to a friend earning an award. Although it was our first time meeting, we were already extremely connected due to our common friend, and I found myself returning his gaze with equal admiration. It felt like a true “Why didn’t we meet sooner?!” kind of moment.

His blue eyes flicked away from me all at once when the door to the skybox squeaked open. I figured someone had left to buy food or something, but I was wrong. In came Louis Selkirk, sporting some Adidas sweatpants, high-end sneakers, and a zipped track jacket. His mother smothered him in a hug and he said hello to his father as well before Gram turned around and looked at him. Niall and I watched from afar as Louis’ generally dignified expression softened into a sort of startled joy. Or he may have been in shock upon seeing her—I couldn’t tell you.

“Mrs. Dion,” I heard him say, for everyone else seemed to grow quiet momentarily, and he outstretched his arms to give her a hug and a kiss on the cheek.

They chatted quietly for a couple of minutes before anyone ever appeared to mention me. In the meantime, Niall and I talked some more about the game and about our personal connections to Louis. I was in the middle of explaining that my Rovers beanie was a present from him when Niall gave me a weird anticipatory smile, hinting that there was somebody standing behind me. In less than a second, there was indeed a hand touching my left shoulder blade. Niall just chuckled when he saw me freeze in place, and I have no doubt that my face turned an embarrassing shade of red. I’d been waiting for this but I didn’t think of how to react when the moment finally came.

I looked up to find Louis peering down at me, his eyes duller, his hair rougher, his face scruffier. He still gave me a tiny smile despite the internal vanquishment he seemed to be dealing with, and I stood up out of my chair, not hesitating to pull him closer to me for a hug. Niall and Gram and Louis’ parents and the other top salespeople all dripped out of the picture for a brief second. I felt like crying so badly that I couldn’t speak.

“Hey, love,” Louis said softly. He tried to pull away but my arms would not release him. I was too fragile to be apart from him, and I felt like a Martian in the sense that if I stood far enough away that I could no longer smell Louis’ smoky, black-sandy, sea-salty drugstore musk, I would die of asphyxiation. Thankfully my body language implied this.

“Hi,” I finally uttered out. I realized a minute too late that my eyes were indeed watery so when I squeezed them shut, my mascara smudged a little bit. Gram was staring in our direction, a reminiscent smile painted onto her face, but she didn’t interrupt.

At last, Louis grabbed me by the shoulders and held me a little ways away from him, so I giggled—I didn’t mean to mob him.

“May I sit?” he asked. I just nodded and sat down in my own chair again, eager. Niall was on his phone, though it looked like he had just finished taking a picture, perhaps one of us.

“I’m gettin’ anoder Guinness,” Niall announced, then offered us each one by pointing his index fingers at us. “Charlie? _Louis_?”

“Sure,” he said, and then in a more parental tone he added, “but _only_ _one_.” I laughed, and then he was off.

When Niall was gone, I set my hands down in my lap and gazed admiringly at Louis. He hadn’t changed in any way. “How are you?”

Louis shook his head. “Fine. Had a couple girlfriends over the years but right now I’m fine. But tell me about yourself, ‘cause that’s what I’m actually interested in.”

“I’m fine too,” I said, feeling bubbly due to his unchanged selflessness. “I’ve had a couple of relationships as well, but they were all short-lived. Oh, and I’m a German teacher.”

“I always thought you’d be good with kids,” Louis commented sincerely. “I’ve been workin’ in sports journalism. We just got back from LA after doing a report on the Lakers. It was proper amazing. Had a tribute to Kobe.”

“The Lakers, huh?” I repeated. He smiled at me, obviously pleased with his accomplishments. “So do you live around here or are you just visiting?”

“I’ve got three flats actually,” he said, “so I’m everywhere. One in LA, one in London, and the last one’s right here. But for the most part, I get to choose where I’m staying.”

“You’re making bank.”

“It comes wif a price,” he shrugged humbly. “Me job’s been super exhausting. Maybe even more exhausting than bein’ round kids all the time.” He stuck his finger in his mouth and pretended to gag.

“_Nothing_ is harder than working with kids,” I challenged him lightheartedly. He laughed at me, placing his hands into his jacket pockets. “I just love how you made a career out of your top two interests. Not many people can swing it.”

“I appreciate that,” he acknowledged, nodding his head once. His eyes traveled north of mine and seemed to land on my beanie, which he smiled at. “Me denim jacket’s finally too small. Had to pull out this old thing.”

“Aww,” I complained. “I’m amazed it lasted you all those years. I made a good investment, didn’t I?”

“Actually, if memory serves, your nan did the investing.” He gave me a cheeky smile and reached his arm over the table, hand searching for mine. I lifted one out of my lap and grabbed onto it. It was a familiar feeling, holding Louis’ hand, though it was much more calloused now and maybe even bigger. “You’ve always given me such incredible gifts. Did you know I still use that camera you bought me?”

“I did,” I informed him. “Your mom told me when I got here.”

“Mmm. Speaking of mums,” Louis added cautiously, “how’s yours?”

I was touched that he asked. “She’s back in remission.”

Relief washed over Louis—and I’m not just assuming this, because the way he sat up straight and beamed down at me proved that it was a topic he had been concerned about. Maybe it was hard for him to even mention my mother in case something had happened to her without him knowing, but now that he was aware that nothing had, he was visibly ecstatic. He squeezed my hand ever so slightly, shook it, and brought it to his lips to kiss it.

“I’m so glad to hear that,” he told me. I grinned in reply. I hadn’t known it before, but a piece of me that I lost when I entered adulthood was slowly coming back to me.

—

When the game was over and everyone was home from the stadium, it was pitch black out with the exception of some lampposts whose yellow lightbulbs were flickering into nothingness. I would have gone to bed right away, being older and more tired all the time, but I received a text message from a new phone number that invited me for last-minute drinks. “_BTW_,” it said, “_it’s Louis_.”

After having some coffee to keep myself awake, I drove to the pub he indicated. I had been to it several times with my coworkers and with Valerie during uni, so I was quite familiar with the place.

Inside, Louis was sitting with a couple of tall, buff guys at one corner of the bar, laughing at someone’s anecdote, and he had his fingers barely looped around a pint of golden ale. I pulled a stool out from under the bar and let it groan against the floor to announce my presence, and Louis turned to face me, his eyes lighting up.

“Lads, this is Charlie,” he introduced us, not turning his head away from me. I reached across him to shake hands with the two men; thankfully neither of them were wasted. “Charlie, that’s Seny and that’s Jon.” He shielded his mouth with one hand and whispered to me, “They’re Rovers!”

It took me a minute to recognize them out of uniform, but as soon as I could picture them in their respective positions, I understood. I nodded at Louis because I knew what this meant to him.

“Bugger,” said Seny to Jon, eyeballing his iPhone screen with discontent. “Louis, man, we’ve gotta run. Thanks for the interview today. Smashed it.”

“No worries,” Louis shook them off, happy to have spoken to them at all. Jon and Seny got up and left the pub, leaving cash on the bartop. “Can you believe it, Charlie? Life is finally payin’ me back for all its bullshit.”

“I see that,” I nodded, impressed. He blinked out of his starstruck trance and put an arm around my back as a way of greeting me. “Well, I’m glad you could make it. Niall’s stuck talking to his mum on the phone out back.”

“Poor guy,” I laughed. “He and I really seemed to hit it off back at the game.”

Louis’ brows arched with surprise. “D’you know what? I thought I saw him starin’ at you before I said hello.”

“Did you?” I asked.

Oddly, what stood out to me about Louis’ comment wasn’t that Niall seemed to have taken a liking to me, but rather it was that Louis had finally let go. Eight years ago, he would have taken a swing at anyone who looked at me a certain way, but since then he seemed to have grown out of his jealousy problem. In fact, his whole conduct suggested he was _rooting_ for Niall and me.

“Well, can I have his number?” I asked him.

Normally I wouldn’t be so straightforward, but Niall wasn’t even in the room and I couldn’t think of the next time I’d ever run into him. Besides, being a single twenty-seven-year-old was tiring. Louis nodded eagerly at me and pulled his phone out of his pocket so I could type his Irish friend’s digits into my own. I made Niall a contact but resolved to text him later in the night when I wasn’t busy catching up, and Louis seemed excited on my behalf.

The whole evening, Louis and I updated each other about our lives. I told him Pappy had passed away the year before and that I went to Germany for around two months, and in return he told me he and his high school friend group were back in contact—except Zain, for some reason. They met up frequently, seeing as Harry, Niall, and Louis took up traveling jobs and Liam was awfully conversational. Louis said he was obsessed with his occupation and my heart pounded with joy; during our teenage years, he looked at life as a bitter entity, but now I could see that things were vastly different. Finding our dream jobs was one of the benefits he and I both reaped after our split in 2011.

I left the bar close to midnight. Louis and I weren’t drunk, for we had spent most of the night telling each other stories and had very little time left to pick up our glasses. The time went by unsettlingly fast. I kissed him on the cheek to bid farewell and again we were apart, not knowing when we would see each other next. I felt bad that he had to hang behind and wait for Niall.

Right before I pulled out of the parking lot at the pub, I decided it would be a good time to send my new friend a text. During our conversation in the skybox, it felt like we’d known each other for an eternity, so I wasn’t the least bit nervous. Especially after that replenishing encounter with Louis.

**Me, 23:52 //** Hey. It’s Charlie.

He replied a minute or so before I got home:

**Niall, 23:59 //** My my, you just took me by surprise!


	15. Concept Album

“[Act My Age](https://youtu.be/yn6H_9HLnnA)” - One Direction

“[Adore You](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yezDEWako8U)” - Harry Styles

“[Always You](https://youtu.be/ZSfVtcHpgTQ)” - Louis Tomlinson

“[Break the Rules](https://youtu.be/_OSjtjoavqM)” - Charli XCX

“[Carolina](https://youtu.be/BarDOBWuVg4)” - Harry Styles

“[Change Your Ticket](https://youtu.be/X5rnsL9vdE8)” - One Direction

“[iT’s YoU](https://youtu.be/2hffbFKHJS4)” - Zayn

“[I Wish](https://youtu.be/GhqQi58fbsw)” - One Direction

“[Miss You](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inZzcTXYowY)” - Louis Tomlinson

“[Seeing Blind](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKbl19xeSIQ)” - Niall Horan

“[She](https://youtu.be/zQ3PeDGswz4)” - Harry Styles

“[Summer Love](https://youtu.be/4tlONrEkUfw)” - One Direction

“[Taken](https://youtu.be/_mi3L3EL5K8)” - One Direction

“[Woman](https://youtu.be/1lNvDgm2RqY)” - Harry Styles

“[You and Me](https://youtu.be/3NMlEdoDbU4)” - Niall Horan

“[Walls](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASt2TJ48r6k)” - Louis Tomlinson

“[We Made It](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWXRh6icAzQ)” - Louis Tomlinson


End file.
